Cindy Thagard’s thoughtful post Falling Down made me think about the many times as parents when we have to really think our way through. Our first instincts may not always be correct. When we have babies, we have to use trial and error – a lot. That alone can be unsettling. Then, as our children grow, we are continually bombarded with information aimed at making us worry. We wonder: Is my child okay? Is my child on track? Am I messing this up somehow? Who thought it was a good idea to put me in charge? The gray areas of parenting are what make it so hard.
Certainly there is plenty of helpful information too — an understanding of Child Development is invaluable — but our natural parental fears and insecurities make us susceptible to all sorts of pressures. We can be easy prey. We can sometimes torment ourselves about whether our child is falling behind. According to Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget, as noted in a recent Alliance for Childhood publication, a more common American question seems to be: “How can I speed up the developmental process?” Americans assume that sooner is better. When it comes to certain skills, this is simply not the case.
Want your child to love reading? Read to them every day.
The skill I have in mind is reading. It is thrilling for parents when their children learn to read. But in the case of reading, we can do harm when we push before the child is ready. Sunflower blogger Jaime’s excellent post, The Gift of Words, gives us wonderful ideas for how to foster a love of reading in our children. Read to babies and children every day, sing to them, tell them stories, and understand that there is no evidence to support the claim that early reading leads to later success in school or a later love of reading. This is not a gray area – the evidence is clear.
I think it’s hard for us, living in our American culture, to really understand and believe that. Our policy makers have ignored the evidence for years. Play has all but vanished from kindergarten. I get very upset about this. Take a breath and relax if your child is not reading at age five. Think about these statements, from a recent article by the Alliance for Childhood, The Crisis in Early Education:
The pushing down of the elementary school curriculum into early childhood has reached a new peak with the adoption by almost every state of the so called common core standards. They call for kindergartners to master more than 90 skills related to literacy and math, many intended to get children reading in kindergarten. Yet there is no research showing that children who read at age five do better in the long run than those who learn at six or seven. For many children the outcomes of this hurried curriculum are unhealthy. Educators and physicians report increasing incidents of extreme and aggressive behavior in preschools and kindergartens and link these to the stress children experience in school.
Studies show, children who play in kindergarten excel over others in many areas, including reading, mathematics, social and emotional adjustment, creativity, intelligence, oral expression, and industry
The Alliance for Childhood is spreading the word about the vast evidence that exists on this topic. One study that struck me is from Germany. They compared children from 50 play based kindergartens and 50 centers for cognitive achievement. By age ten the children who had played in kindergarten excelled over the others in many areas: reading, mathematics, social and emotional adjustment, creativity, intelligence, oral expression, and “industry” (Linda Darling-Hammond and Jon Snyder, “Curriculum Studies and the Traditions of Inquiry,” Handbook of Research on Curriculum, 1992.). When the results of this study came out in 1992, German policy makers responded and converted all of their kindergartens back to being play based. In Finland, they don’t begin formal schooling until age seven, and their 15 year olds place in the top three on international exams (Programme for International Student Assessment :PISA). The U.S. ranks much lower.
I don’t have all the answers on reading, certainly. I have one child who loves to read, and one who does not. And I have some regrets. My main regret is that I stopped reading to my children too soon. I know Sunflower parents who continued to read to their children into the high school years. Their children were excellent readers much earlier than that. That family reading time was a way to spark discussion, soothe, enjoy a shared experience, laugh, learn and reflect together. If you want to find out more and advocate for children on this issue, visit the Alliance website and register with them.
Jennifer Ligeti is Managing Director at Sunflower Creative Arts. Over the years she’s worn many hats at Sunflower, including Seedlings teacher and facilitator of communication workshops for parents. She is mom to two former Seedlings, Samantha and Alex.
© Jennifer Ligeti and Sunflower Creative Arts, 2012
Photos © Jaime Greenberg, Haidor Truu, and Sunflower Creative Arts 2012
Excellent reminder, Jennifer. With the end of kindergarten approaching, I too can get caught up in wondering where my son is with reading compared to his friends and classmates. It’s especially tough when you know your child really wants to read on his own but he’s not quite there. Thanks for the reminder to take a deep breath and let him develop this at his own pace. Meanwhile, we’ll continue enjoying the world with stories both written and verbal.
Jennifer. This is thoughtful and moving. Sadly, the American educational establishment is fixated on improving high stakes-testing and the focus on cognitive achievement within a strictly standards-based curriculum.
The homeschool world however, with its three percent of American families, would largely be in agreement with you. Especially the “relaxed homeschoolers” or the “interest-driven” homeschoolers (previously known as unschoolers). Pop over to secularhomeschool.com and you’ll find oodles of support.
The problem actually isn’t “early” reading, it’s they way traditional schools *teach* reading. When Maria Montessori developed the first Montessori schools, all she had available for the children was a set of sandpaper letters, believing that to go any farther was inappropriate for the children with whom she worked. They were ages 3-6. The children worked with the sandpaper letters and then, when they were drawing with chalk, started to write the letters they knew without any prompting from an adult. Then one child (around age 4) started to write words and prompted an “explosion into writing” for other children. Soon most of the class was writing on everything they could get their hands on – Montessori even wrote about children writing on the crusts of their bread! And then, about six months later, the second magic moment happened. One of the children realized that he (or she) could read the words he (or she) had written. This became an “explosion into reading” similar to the previous explosion into writing. All of it happened (in many different environments, with many different classes, over many years) without reading or writing being taught at all. All the teachers did was introduce a knowledge of phonetics and a muscle memory of the letter shapes. The parents were illiterate. The children had these epiphanies because of their own interest in writing and reading!
So yes, I agree that adults shouldn’t push reading on children, but not because it’s not age-appropriate. We shouldn’t push ANY kind of learning (with the exception of those few things needed for safety’s sake) for the simple reason that we only *truly* learn when we are intrinsically motivated. If we let them follow their inner teacher and simply connect them with safe opportunities to discover things, they will move farther along the educational path than any traditionally educated child will. There will be no divide between work and play because their work is joyful and pleasurable to them when they are allowed to follow their instincts.
this is really interesting. i think we have to remember that, as with all things, our ideas about raising children are in progress, not finished. what i am instructed to do with my child is similar, but not the same as what my mother was supposed to do with me. that’s not the way we like to think about things. for example, mothers now are guilted about not breastfeeding enough. it feels important and there are lots of articles that make it out to be a life or death choice. but breastfeeding was out of vogue in the 50s and 60s and most kids were just fine. i was thinking about this the other day when my son had his 18 month appt and we had to fill out an autism screening. according to that, we were behind, but not behind enough to get any kind of diagnosis. we were just supposed to keep an eye on things. that’s really stressful as a parent and your first impulse is to throw yourself into “fixing” your child and naturally you also blame yourself for failing him. it was really hard to rein myself in and remember that my parents never filled out any of those forms. and when i go back to the pedi, even in a couple of months, they might have changed all the criteria in the screening, just because they’re that new. i appreciate that they’re trying to offer help early, but i also wish more emphasis was placed on individual variations in our kids. thanks for this insightful piece.
I linked to this post on my blog expanding on my comment and giving some more information – http://montessorimoments-dynamite.blogspot.com/2012/04/on-so-called-early-reading.html. I figured I wrote a long enough comment and if I had more to say I should do it on my own blog :D. I tend to be pretty blunt so I hope my response doesn’t seem harsh or critical – I always appreciate something that makes me think, even if it just helps me consolidate the viewpoint I already had 🙂 Thanks for posting a thought provoking article!
I’m so glad this was timely for you!
Thanks, John. Homeschoolers take many different approaches and the bottom line seems to be that no two children follow the same exact path. I know that “unschooled” children learn to read at a wide variety of ages and often with no formal instruction at all. They live in a literate society and they are motivated, on their own schedule, to read. I can’t stop thinking about the other 97%, though. The direction we’re heading, which seems to be an attempt to get all children of X grade on the same page on the same day, is hurting our kids.
I’m so glad this sparked your interest! I enjoyed reading your post. What is so sad for me in watching the direction of our current educational policy is the complete brushing aside of the needs and interests and learning styles of individual children. I doubt that there is one perfect way to teach reading – just as there is not one perfect time. I agree that the individual child’s own interest, in both the process of reading and the content being read, is key to any hope of success.
You’re very welcome. You know your son best, and advice and standards and norms do indeed get revised and re-written all the time. I think you’re giving your son a great gift by “reining yourself in” 🙂
It’s never too late to resume reading to your high-school aged son. I just know how much he would enjoy it! Seriously, Jennifer, great blog, you have done some very thorough research and it is fascinating. Your devoted admirer, Hannah
As you know, I am your devoted admirer as well 🙂 I love to tell the story of the fabulous example you set by heading off to your room with a book…to be joined shortly thereafter by most if not all four of your children, each curled up with you and reading to themselves.
I agree with some of the comments of how it is introduced. I learnt to read at 2. I don’t remember, my mother did this with me… I have always loved reading. I am surprised though, as my mother is Australian and my dad’s American and so I grew up in two countries and it was interesting to see the change in reading. I was surprised the lack of reading skills in the American environment, and yet all my friends knew how to read before they were 4/5 in Australia. We made it fun, there was lots of play involved. My daughter is 4 and knows how to read most words for her age level. We use a program called Reading Eggs (Australian) on the net. This program is exceptional because the games are fun. I was trying to find an American program equivilent and they were really boring, tedius, and in my opinion “WORK”. Reading shouldn’t be work, it should come naturally and in a fun way. I don’t feel I have had to “work” to help my daughter read, she just has learned to love it because she isn’t pushed and we play games with books/words etc… As a result she enjoys learning and asks for more.
Very informative article
Love this post. I found you from a post by play at home mom. It’s so nice to hear others have the same thoughts about the education system as I do. I feel do alone about it here! Our daughter turned 5 last May and while she was ready for kindergarten we weren’t ready to give up play based learning and decided to give her another year. 5 full days a week just seemed like so much and I was put off by how intense the curriculum was. While I’m still not thrilled about it for this next year I am so thankful we gave her another year of just being a kid. We got a lot of slack from friends and family about the “harm” we were doing to her by waiting. It was very difficult for dh and I to stick to our guns about what we believed was the right thing to do. Thanks for the reminder too of the importance of reading to your child even after they can read. I get caught up sometimes when reading asking dd what words are and not just letting her enjoy the story and being read to. Thanks for bringing me back down to reality! 🙂
Hi Jennifer, John E sent me your way and I really enjoyed reading your post! I’ve had a close-up view of this process because of homeschooling 2 children who couldn’t have been more different in their approach to reading. My oldest basically taught himself. I don’t remember even doing a whole lot. At age 2 he was desperately curious about letters, so I taught him the letters and the sounds they made and he kind of took it from there! He was reading the newspaper out loud by the age of four. My other son was barely even speaking at age 3 and could have cared less about reading at age 5. We also discovered later that he had dyslexia. He’s always been one to learn in big “leaps”, so we never rushed him and just always tried to make the process fun. With some reading and phonics remediation in the elementary and middle school years, he is a teenager reading at a college level, so I think things turned out just fine. 🙂 Great post!!
Your article has calmed my nerves. My son is 5 in kindergarten. He comes home with a stack of homework that has to be turned in by the end of the week. His school is all study and play is only on the playground. What happened to the days of kids bringing home fun crafts they made at school? I know times have changed but my sometimes it is overwhelming for a kid. He is having to learn so much too soon!
I am eternally grateful that both I and my daughter experienced being a “seedling” at Sunflower as opposed to traditional preschool.
I didn’t realize that it was SO much more than a two year experience!!!!! Because of all that I learned I have never felt the societal push towards early …. Anything. I have instead been able to enjoy each step as my daughter develops.
Such an excellent article! Thank you so much for writing it. I agree with so much of it. I have over 30 years of working with children in the primary grades and watching their parents trying to push them into things they are not developmentally ready for. Students in my early years were so much happier and and less stressed because they were allowed to be children. Parents took time to play with them and read to them and interact with them. They saved academics for when they started school. Children are still developing at the same rate and in the same way as when Piaget did his research so many years ago. Pushing academics at them doesn’t give them an advantage. Just because they can memorize letters and words, doesn’t mean they are ready to read and comprehend those symbols. There are SO many lessons they need to learn that don’t involve reading skills. And don’t even get me started on organized sports for pre-teens. (sorry….I’ll get off my soap box now.)
Resisting that pressure and following your own best judgment for your particular child is not always easy to do – so hooray for you and your husband! At Sunflower, we keep the words of Bev Bos in mind: “The basics for children are wonder, discovery and experience.”
A great example of respecting the cues of each individual child! Thanks for sharing your story.
For many children learning to read does come easily and naturally, and keeping it fun is key. For others, it’s more challenging — but it can still be a positive experience with a supportive parent or teacher helping out and not pushing or rushing the child. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I was just talking to someone about this the other day! Three of my four children started first grade with no previous academic / reading experience. They all caught up quickly and read ahead of their grade level now. I’m glad they spent their childhood playing and creating and just being kids. FYI, my 4th child asked to learn to read so obviously, he was ready. I remember one experience when I went to the post office and met a grandmother with a child my daughters age. We started to talk about our children and the woman proceeded to show me how her child could read all the letters on a postal sign. It made me wonder if I should be teaching my daughter letters. Before we went to the post office, we had been laying on the ground watching the wind blow the curtains in. Now I was questinging if I was a slacker. I think it’s easy to get caught up in thinking that you need to start your kids learning as early as possible.
I’m so happy to hear that, because our stress only increases our children’s stress. Teachers are sometimes under pressure from parents, as well as administrators, to speed up learning. One step parents can take is to let our children’s teachers know that we understand about child development and individual variations, and that we want to help take the pressure off of them. Parents make great advocates for play and experiential learning!
Thanks so much Mandy — your words are wonderful to hear!
Thank you so much for writing. It’s very valuable to hear from someone with your extensive experience.
Modeling and teaching relaxation, daydreaming, quiet contemplation…these are valuable “lessons” we give our kids as well. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
I agree that we need to take a close look at what we are asking kindergarteners (and younger) to do. As an occupational therapist, sit at a desk for lengthy periods, handle a pencil and make letters before they are ready comes to mind. Combined with less time with family and nature and more screen time, I get very antsy. As parents, we have the capacity to make small changes that make a big difference: walk instead of drive, talk instead of text, make stuff together instead of buy, read instead of TV time…you know the stuff.
Nothing fancy. Back to basics. Be the change!
such wise words…thank you!
Very interesting. It’s just one case, but my oldest daughter’s experience also shows that early reading is no sign of later success in school. Lucy was slow to learn to read in first grade — her school doesn’t teach reading in kindergarten — and needed extra help before second grade. But once she got the swing of it, her reading took off. Now in 6th grade she not only loves reading, but has terrific comprehension and test scores. Plus she reads amazingly fast — much faster than I do!
Another reassuring example to calm the nerves of parents — thanks Amey! My Sam learned to read at about six and a half, but didn’t “take off” with reading until about age 9. She now loves to read and reads much faster than I do too!
Thank you for this thoughtful post. I suspect has resonance in more than childhood reading. Why as adults do we always assume that faster is better? From our own reading time, to preparing and eating food, to making decisions, to exercise, to learning a new skill, even “catching up” with people we love…faster is not better. Thank you for the reminder to think about this differently.
Nina, I love the way you expanded this basic idea to other realms…made me think anew on this topic and ponder many other areas of my life as well. Thank you.
Dear Niffy [if I may still use that name] — I am not surprised to read your wonderful posts and see the wisdom of your thoughts. It thrills me that a person of your skills and brains is focussing on early childhood education. I loved teaching at the high school level, but I believe that those who teach kids in the early years [both parents and formal teachers] lay the all-important foundation for all that follows. I agree absolutely that American education is wrong-headed in its emphasis on rushing kids into reading before they may be ready. I kept both my kids out of school for a year, very much to their benefit. My son entered 2nd grade unable to read, and — b/c he was ready and she knew it — a brilliant teacher took him from beginning reading up to the top of his grade and beyond in a matter of weeks. It is so important to wait for the kids to be ready. I also agree about the crucial importance of reading TO children. My son was read to right up until he learned to read himself, and then he was too impatient — he wanted to do it all himself. To this day, he is a voracious reader. My daughter, who has multiple disabilities [Asberger’s, but without any savant aspect; epilepsy; low IQ] has never read with pleasure, BUT b/c we read to her ceaselessly, and b/c her father took a special course on how to teach a child to read visually [not phonics], he taught her to read, and she can manage in this world.
Betsy,
Thank you so much for sharing your insights and the examples of your own children’s experiences with reading – and for the compliments as well! As you may know, you are and always will be my favorite teacher of all time. I was lucky to have some fantastic teachers in the early years too, including my mom, who knew instinctively that all we needed were books, blocks, paint, dirt, water, dress-ups, sand and time to ourselves. But sometimes kids need more, and it’s so fortunate for both of your children that they had you and your husband to give them what they needed. – Niffy