Thank you for the thoughtful comments that followed the first question. It's been a rather busy few weeks, as I mentioned I've started studying by distance learning and it's been a steep curve to get up an running on my own, setting a schedule and sticking to it, handing in assignments using academic writing (aaahhhhgggg) etc.
Here goes on what I've been thinking about the reading thing.
In my experience (two children now reading...) and based on what people around me say and have experienced, children fall into roughly one of three camps. Either they wake up one morning at a rather early age and suddenly can read, as if the reading fairy kissed their brow over night and suddenly it all fell into place with relative ease and comfort (my daughter); or they go along with the flow in class at school (or in one of the pre-school tutor groups) and gradually and systematically they get the hang of things and then become more and more fluent and off they go. Or, it just doesn't work. No amount of extra tutoring, more reading, more help, more of anything seems to get them going. They learn the phonics and promptly forget them. They get it the one day but it's gone the next. They stumble and struggle and nothing works (my son).
Obviously the first lot are easy. There's not really much you can do wrong, besides deprive them of books and reading. And the second lot, it depends on how anxious you are. Probably most kids fall into this category. If you are patient, "the system" aka school will take care of things, and you just have to do the daily reading as required with them, and continue reading to them. If you are not so patient, you enroll them in one of the many extra classes which can start at whatever age you start feeling the pressure. The "truth" is that research has shown that no matter when you start, as long as there isn't an underlying learning issue, the effects of being early / late generally even out by the age of eight. BUT, on the other hand, you could be doing some harm in starting too early. It's a simple question of time in my opinion. When a child is ready to read, just like when they're ready to ride a bike, or control their bladder, it all happens easily and painlessly and takes very little time or effort. When they're not ready though it takes a LOT of time and effort. So it's a trade off. Sure if you want to spend a lot of time doing it, go ahead. But that time could be spent doing other stuff. Really important stuff. Stuff that won't be done later, because it may just be too late then. Stuff like playing and learning to be a little human part of society. I couldn't have said it better, so I'm going to link you to someone who passionately believes that early reading is bad for your child. She's particularly against doing it via a DVD.
The fact is, that reading is hard. I've recently starting reading "Proust and the Squid" and it seems that reading is a rather "unnatural" act, that takes a lot of cognitive re-wiring.
What should a good parent be doing then? Well, reading TO your children is a great start. In fact, one of the things that Wolf highlights in Proust and the Squid is the huge gap between children who are read to (and talked to) and children who are not.
The third group. What to say about them? It's hard. For a start. If you think that it's tough being a parent with all the comparison going on, try being a child. When they started to read, my kids were in this super sensitive kid friendly school who went out of their way to disguise what reading level kids were at. It was all obscure and had special names and colors and the parents generally had little idea where exactly their kid stood on any conventional reading scale. But my god the kids knew EXACTLY where they were. They knew who were the good readers, the bad readers and the non-readers. You may as well have put it all out in the open and had the charts and scores for all to see and comment and compare.
The question is what to do when there is a problem. Do you put more effort into it? More time? More drilling? Do you shelve it and wait for some maturation? Go to a specialist? Try on your own? There are no easy answers, and I'll deal with that all in another post. One thing I will say, is that parents in their efforts may actually help a child to read, but then mask that there is an underlying problem that trips the child up later.
Then there is the bit that I'd call "it's complicated". Culture. Yup, that big word. I'm not too fond of the "us and them" thing. "They" all send their kids for tutoring. "We" are all cuddly and attachment. "They" are harder working. The thing is, you exist in a culture. Not too long ago, being excluded from your culture was somewhat akin to be murdered. Without the community you would die. (Hunger games is just part of the circle of history repeating itself). You cannot exist in a vacuum.
More later ...
Here goes on what I've been thinking about the reading thing.
In my experience (two children now reading...) and based on what people around me say and have experienced, children fall into roughly one of three camps. Either they wake up one morning at a rather early age and suddenly can read, as if the reading fairy kissed their brow over night and suddenly it all fell into place with relative ease and comfort (my daughter); or they go along with the flow in class at school (or in one of the pre-school tutor groups) and gradually and systematically they get the hang of things and then become more and more fluent and off they go. Or, it just doesn't work. No amount of extra tutoring, more reading, more help, more of anything seems to get them going. They learn the phonics and promptly forget them. They get it the one day but it's gone the next. They stumble and struggle and nothing works (my son).
Obviously the first lot are easy. There's not really much you can do wrong, besides deprive them of books and reading. And the second lot, it depends on how anxious you are. Probably most kids fall into this category. If you are patient, "the system" aka school will take care of things, and you just have to do the daily reading as required with them, and continue reading to them. If you are not so patient, you enroll them in one of the many extra classes which can start at whatever age you start feeling the pressure. The "truth" is that research has shown that no matter when you start, as long as there isn't an underlying learning issue, the effects of being early / late generally even out by the age of eight. BUT, on the other hand, you could be doing some harm in starting too early. It's a simple question of time in my opinion. When a child is ready to read, just like when they're ready to ride a bike, or control their bladder, it all happens easily and painlessly and takes very little time or effort. When they're not ready though it takes a LOT of time and effort. So it's a trade off. Sure if you want to spend a lot of time doing it, go ahead. But that time could be spent doing other stuff. Really important stuff. Stuff that won't be done later, because it may just be too late then. Stuff like playing and learning to be a little human part of society. I couldn't have said it better, so I'm going to link you to someone who passionately believes that early reading is bad for your child. She's particularly against doing it via a DVD.
The fact is, that reading is hard. I've recently starting reading "Proust and the Squid" and it seems that reading is a rather "unnatural" act, that takes a lot of cognitive re-wiring.
What should a good parent be doing then? Well, reading TO your children is a great start. In fact, one of the things that Wolf highlights in Proust and the Squid is the huge gap between children who are read to (and talked to) and children who are not.
The third group. What to say about them? It's hard. For a start. If you think that it's tough being a parent with all the comparison going on, try being a child. When they started to read, my kids were in this super sensitive kid friendly school who went out of their way to disguise what reading level kids were at. It was all obscure and had special names and colors and the parents generally had little idea where exactly their kid stood on any conventional reading scale. But my god the kids knew EXACTLY where they were. They knew who were the good readers, the bad readers and the non-readers. You may as well have put it all out in the open and had the charts and scores for all to see and comment and compare.
The question is what to do when there is a problem. Do you put more effort into it? More time? More drilling? Do you shelve it and wait for some maturation? Go to a specialist? Try on your own? There are no easy answers, and I'll deal with that all in another post. One thing I will say, is that parents in their efforts may actually help a child to read, but then mask that there is an underlying problem that trips the child up later.
Then there is the bit that I'd call "it's complicated". Culture. Yup, that big word. I'm not too fond of the "us and them" thing. "They" all send their kids for tutoring. "We" are all cuddly and attachment. "They" are harder working. The thing is, you exist in a culture. Not too long ago, being excluded from your culture was somewhat akin to be murdered. Without the community you would die. (Hunger games is just part of the circle of history repeating itself). You cannot exist in a vacuum.
More later ...
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