To read or not to read

The majority of people believe that child’s early development basically means the ability to read at early age, when the kid is 2-3 years old. That’s what I’ve also thought before becoming a mother. However, as the psychologists admit the child being 2 or 3 years old is not able to feel/live/understand completely what he or she reads. Only after 5-6-7 they become emotionally ready to read on their own.

 

That’s what I’m observing with the majority of kids – they are not ready to read at early age, they just do not need it. Though there are lots of methods how to teach children to read from their birth (e.g. Doman), there is just no use of doing it so early.

Besides, there is not a proved link between the love of the books and the ability to read at early age. Real life example: a girl learned to read at 7 y.o., but she truly became the fan of books, going to the library every weekend. The love of books should be inculcated in children by their parents: reading to their kids as often as possible, discussing the characters and the plot together, reading the books themselves to provide an example.

Our way with Maria: she already learnt almost all the letters when she was two. Few months before her third birthday she was able to read short words. Encouraged by this success, I was pushing it further, but felt really strong resistance to continue doing it  - obviously Maria had a “reading allergy” (she didn’t want to look at the texts, she hated the blocks with the letters). So, I gave up and let her do whatever she wanted. Next half of the year I made some attempts to continue our reading, but again not successful. Then I gave up totally and decided to wait for her initiative. Recently Maria (3.5 y.o.) herself chose an activity book with the stickers, where the tasks required some reading skills. Needless to say that she excellently did the tasks herself, which made her really proud (me too, of course). Right now we don’t have any systematic reading exercises and probably we won’t. I suppose that the best way is the natural development of this skill.