My mother did this with me too (although not so systematically - just reading books with me regularly and putting kids' educational channels on TV that happened to teach phonics). She sent me to preschool already reading fluently; the teacher didn't believe her until I read her a printout she'd given me to take home.
In the 3rd grade I tested at an 8th grade reading level, and in high school I scored 790/800 on the reading portion of the SAT without specifically practicing for it. They called me "gifted," but I think I just started with several years of experience reading for pleasure when my peers had little to none, and that early confidence snowballed into further successes. Now I'm a couple years out of college and my job is translating Japanese novels into English.
So although I'm a sample of one, I strongly believe that this approach really does give kids an invaluable head start.
This is fascinating! Thank you for writing this. We saw both our kids start reading around age 4. Younger one a bit faster because he wanted to do what his brother did. I think they both learnt alphabets first, mostly our fault, and we didn't do much beyond reading with them occasionally, and being around places where reading things are interesting for them: these were mainly museums for us. Which made them also learn words first, animals and dinosaurs facts to begin with, but also planets and general science, and then back-solved to start reading.
An interesting part was that at his Montessori school the teachers told us the 3yo wasn't reading. Turned out it's because they were doing 3 letter simple words, and he didn't care to read those.
My children went to a Steiner Waldorf School and didn’t learn to read till they were seven, like most other countries in Europe. But they were told lots of stories and did lots of drawing that prepared them to make the linked shapes of letters when they were ready. Ms for mountains, Cs for waves etc. when they were finally ready they picked it up in a matter of weeks and were well ahead of their peers in state schools in less than a year. At a young age I think small children are better off focusing on play and oral stories rather than doing close work that requires as lot of attention. I say this as someone who was taught to read at the age of 3 and it has taken me years to get out of my head and start paying attention to the world around me. I’m not knocking the value of reading -I still love it and read rather than watch TV - but everything at the right time. I’m a writer now but so are both my children in their work. Try telling your children stories instead of reading to them. It’s so much more bonding because it’s something you do together with eye contact and it teaches them the rhythms of language and increases their vocabulary.
I don't think these are competitive, they're complementary. Beyond actively holding them back I'm not sure what we should've done to have them not read to be honest. And that feels the worst option of all.
Thank you @Erik Hoel for these wonderful essays on teaching children how to read. I’m very inspired and cannot wait to be a father who follows in your example
I was an early spontaneous reader myself; as was my eldest daughter. Both of us learned to read on our own at 3; and although we were not reading "The Hobbit" at that age, we both were reading chapter books by kindergarten.
I'm a huge fan of reading, as is my daughter and as was my mother, who was a librarian for 50 years. However, in both our cases, I just feel I should point out a couple potential pitfalls to being an early and highly proficient reader:
1. In my case, I found school to be a huge waste of time. It was horribly frustrating sitting there listening to the other kids painfully trying to sound out a word, while meanwhile I was reading on a fifth-grade level at age six. I have ADHD, so I was already inclined to find sitting in class excruciating to begin with - and the fact that they were trying to teach me the alphabet when I was already reading far above my grade level just reinforced my conviction that education was a colossal bore and there wasn't really anything they could teach me that I couldn't just learn on my own by reading the textbook. Being the sort of child who was fond of pointless rebellion, I made it my mission to do as little work and be as troublesome as possible throughout most of my school career.
2. My daughter has a much more compliant temperament than I did, and she was the sort of child who loved getting approval from adults. She was a spectacular student and maintained an A+ average with minimal effort, as much of the curriculum in elementary and middle school is very reading and language-based. However, when she got to high school and for the first time had to take classes (pre-calc, statistics, physics) that were not easily aced by simply reading the textbook, she had a bit of an identity crisis. There were many, many tears and much wailing "I didn't realize I was so DUMB!" as she had literally never had to actually apply herself before. I was somewhat prepared for this, as I remembered vividly that I had a similar experience with higher math (I was excellent at basic arithmetic which resulted in being placed in the accelerated math program in junior high - but I was baffled by algebra and all that followed and became extremely math-phobic after that). She did learn that math was different from history, English, and social studies in that it really requires a lot of drilling and rote memorization, and her diligence was rewarded with decent grades - although she continued to find math much, much more stressing than any other subject.
Thank you for this, and for ressource suggestions! My daughter is just about to turn one in June, so it’s all in planning stages for me, but I am taking notes. I read a lot as a kid, probably much more than I find time (and headspace) for now, and I’d love to pass it along to her, so all of this is very helpful and encouraging.
I do wonder if you know of any studies/ data on early reading in bilingual children? We speak two languages at home, and I know this affects language development—though I believe it’s worth the possible delay in speaking. And she already loves books, probably because we don’t do any screen time. If you know of any resources/ studies on bilingual language acquisition, specifically, I’d be grateful for any leads.
We have been on largely the same track, about a year ahead (our daughter is 4.5 now). We did some different methods but some are the same. For example, we use spaced repetition heavily (a Leitner box), but have no screen time at all. We are less north-starred on reading for pleasure but indeed that is the intrinsic motivation that carried from about 2/3 into the process. We pursued math in tandem, but ramped that more recently. All in all we have similar results: a very happy, very well self-regulating, very imaginative and communicative and social kid who is empowered with the gift of reading. And we intend to carry this onward towards later education, ie if she is 3 years ahead of school norms now it stands to reason she can stay three years ahead, if not more.
If you ever want to have a call or discussion on technique, happy to exchange tips there. And as an aside, our original idea to explore this came from your article on aristocratic tutoring. So, thanks again for that influence!
This is the way we taught all three of our sons to read. All of them read before 4 years of age, much to the astonishment of their kindergarten teachers. It didn't hurt that I constantly had a book or three close by for myself to read. It really isn't hard, but it takes time and commitment. Kudos to you for giving Roman this gift.
This is such a great post (and series). My wife and I are expecting our first child and, since we’re both bookworms, we’re definitely planning to adopt a similar approach.
Our main challenge is that we’re Italians living in the US. We plan to speak Italian at home and English outside, but reading seems trickier.
Teaching our kids to read in Italian might be easier (it’s a highly phonetic language, unlike English) but we’re concerned about their ability to read in English, especially since they’ll be attending school here. Have you (or any other readers) given any thought to teaching bilingual kids how to read?
Very impressive! My son was a voracious reader until we let him have a phone in Middle School (and he started riding the public bus and being more "free range"). How do you plan to handle the phone situation, which often involves how teens stay in touch with each other?
Also, you've set your son up well for the cognitive / intellectual learning of our schooling system, but what about teaching him about relationships and emotional regulation? What might that look like? While we, of course, work on these skills with him, he spends more of his waking hours at school than with us. My son has had a math class almost every single day of his 12 years in school, but he's never had a single class dedicated to emotional and relationship skills -- just a few scattered, short units. I find this to be a gaping hole in our educational system.
I dread the phone issue. Unfortunately, I can't tell you, because I don't know myself. It's probably 7-10 years away before it becomes pressing. But I absolutely plan to avoid it and put it off as long as possible.
As for relationship and emotional regulation: that's definitely a higher priority than reading. A lot of it is how he relates to his sister (we're at the tail end of a recent jealousy phase that is, thank god, ending). But he has friends and groups he goes to. And his extended family. So he plays with other kids all the time. I wonder what a more focused effort on things like emotional regulation would look like (we take more of a "little bit every day approach") but I've seen a lot of toddler behavior and he's pretty normal so far.
In the videos, it's so clear he's having fun. As you note, it's awesome uninterrupted dad time, but I think I see some of the joy of learning there. Beautiful. Inspiring.
I aim for the same "taking off the training wheels" in grammar teaching ESL, and I think it works reasonably well. I aim to start off with lots of really detailed, intensive teaching of the basics of English grammar, so that they can be really confident on simple sentences. I teach the basics of tenses, and the passive voice. Then... I kinda stop. I mean, I give explanations where they seem needed, but once kids have got a vocabulary of a few hundred words and can read coohesive stories, they can mostly figure out what's going on in a sentence without getting bogged down in the grammar.
This all looks great, and I agree that reading is the parenting secret weapon.
Well done to you and your son! This is an amazing demonstration of the effectiveness of your approach to teaching and the aptitude of your son.
I think the nature-nurture dimension of this is also interesting. It sounds like your son has a very conducive temperament and attitude towards your teaching.
I was interested in teaching my eldest daughter to read early. She was verbal early and loves being read to. However, beyond recognising letters, she objected to my every attempt to tutor her to read herself. Now she's school age and learning to read normally, but she's still rarely lets me help her with home practice.
I'm sure my approach could have been better, but trying to make learning fun was always a priority. It's perplexing. I feel like I've had little success passing on my enthusiasm for learning or practice.
This might just be her nature, but I still hope I can still bring her around to be a motivated learner and enjoy learning with me.
This is a tough one, because of course it's impossible for me to really know too much about the relationship to give good advice. Everyone is different. If you want to hear a bit more about this issue, I do talk about this a bit in one of the series (I think part 2). But tricks that might work easily on a toddler (e.g., giving snacks, like berries, to freely munch on during sessions) might not work as well for an older kid.
It's worth considering where you place this on the scale of other parenting concerns and goals and sort of adjust accordingly. Is this a major concern or major goal? Minor? In the middle?
If just enjoying learning together is what you're after, maybe start not with homework but with a few highly-learning orientated outings, like to a science museum? That gets her more used to the "dad is explaining things" mode, but in an environment that's actually pretty interesting to begin with.
Regarding the nature vs. nurture thing: I do think Roman is naturally curious, which helps. But I think it's moreso our dynamic, not his nature, that makes this possible for us. From the very beginning I was doing long explanations of things, very like teaching. I'd just digress and talk all the time, about everything we saw and were doing, outside or in. So it fits my parenting style. It wasn't something too different when it became more formal. With that said, he's definitely not, ahem, easy to get to do things *in general.* If that were the case, then school, and our success with it (well, so far) would just be some special case of having a very compliant kid. He's not a super-compliant kid. He has *very* strong ideas about how things should be, and woe betide me, or anyone, trying to go against those. I do sometimes, of course, because it's necessary (no, you can't just dress in sweatpants and a sweatshirt on a super hot summer day at the beach, you're going to get heat stroke). Not that I would want this to change! I'm glad he's extremely opinionated about how the world should be, when things should happen, and what outcomes he wants; it means he's highly agential, and I try to respect that part of him as much as possible. But I do think he's probably a lot less compliant in general than this process makes him seem, and a lot of its success was just me trying to make it realllly fun in the beginning (easy to do with a toddler, you just throw them in the air periodically) and having a teacher-student-like dynamic in everything else too.
My mother did this with me too (although not so systematically - just reading books with me regularly and putting kids' educational channels on TV that happened to teach phonics). She sent me to preschool already reading fluently; the teacher didn't believe her until I read her a printout she'd given me to take home.
In the 3rd grade I tested at an 8th grade reading level, and in high school I scored 790/800 on the reading portion of the SAT without specifically practicing for it. They called me "gifted," but I think I just started with several years of experience reading for pleasure when my peers had little to none, and that early confidence snowballed into further successes. Now I'm a couple years out of college and my job is translating Japanese novels into English.
So although I'm a sample of one, I strongly believe that this approach really does give kids an invaluable head start.
This is fascinating! Thank you for writing this. We saw both our kids start reading around age 4. Younger one a bit faster because he wanted to do what his brother did. I think they both learnt alphabets first, mostly our fault, and we didn't do much beyond reading with them occasionally, and being around places where reading things are interesting for them: these were mainly museums for us. Which made them also learn words first, animals and dinosaurs facts to begin with, but also planets and general science, and then back-solved to start reading.
An interesting part was that at his Montessori school the teachers told us the 3yo wasn't reading. Turned out it's because they were doing 3 letter simple words, and he didn't care to read those.
My children went to a Steiner Waldorf School and didn’t learn to read till they were seven, like most other countries in Europe. But they were told lots of stories and did lots of drawing that prepared them to make the linked shapes of letters when they were ready. Ms for mountains, Cs for waves etc. when they were finally ready they picked it up in a matter of weeks and were well ahead of their peers in state schools in less than a year. At a young age I think small children are better off focusing on play and oral stories rather than doing close work that requires as lot of attention. I say this as someone who was taught to read at the age of 3 and it has taken me years to get out of my head and start paying attention to the world around me. I’m not knocking the value of reading -I still love it and read rather than watch TV - but everything at the right time. I’m a writer now but so are both my children in their work. Try telling your children stories instead of reading to them. It’s so much more bonding because it’s something you do together with eye contact and it teaches them the rhythms of language and increases their vocabulary.
I don't think these are competitive, they're complementary. Beyond actively holding them back I'm not sure what we should've done to have them not read to be honest. And that feels the worst option of all.
Thank you @Erik Hoel for these wonderful essays on teaching children how to read. I’m very inspired and cannot wait to be a father who follows in your example
I have to ask: Did you name your son after the French word for "novel" on purpose, to try to harness the power of nominative determinism?
I was an early spontaneous reader myself; as was my eldest daughter. Both of us learned to read on our own at 3; and although we were not reading "The Hobbit" at that age, we both were reading chapter books by kindergarten.
I'm a huge fan of reading, as is my daughter and as was my mother, who was a librarian for 50 years. However, in both our cases, I just feel I should point out a couple potential pitfalls to being an early and highly proficient reader:
1. In my case, I found school to be a huge waste of time. It was horribly frustrating sitting there listening to the other kids painfully trying to sound out a word, while meanwhile I was reading on a fifth-grade level at age six. I have ADHD, so I was already inclined to find sitting in class excruciating to begin with - and the fact that they were trying to teach me the alphabet when I was already reading far above my grade level just reinforced my conviction that education was a colossal bore and there wasn't really anything they could teach me that I couldn't just learn on my own by reading the textbook. Being the sort of child who was fond of pointless rebellion, I made it my mission to do as little work and be as troublesome as possible throughout most of my school career.
2. My daughter has a much more compliant temperament than I did, and she was the sort of child who loved getting approval from adults. She was a spectacular student and maintained an A+ average with minimal effort, as much of the curriculum in elementary and middle school is very reading and language-based. However, when she got to high school and for the first time had to take classes (pre-calc, statistics, physics) that were not easily aced by simply reading the textbook, she had a bit of an identity crisis. There were many, many tears and much wailing "I didn't realize I was so DUMB!" as she had literally never had to actually apply herself before. I was somewhat prepared for this, as I remembered vividly that I had a similar experience with higher math (I was excellent at basic arithmetic which resulted in being placed in the accelerated math program in junior high - but I was baffled by algebra and all that followed and became extremely math-phobic after that). She did learn that math was different from history, English, and social studies in that it really requires a lot of drilling and rote memorization, and her diligence was rewarded with decent grades - although she continued to find math much, much more stressing than any other subject.
Thank you for this, and for ressource suggestions! My daughter is just about to turn one in June, so it’s all in planning stages for me, but I am taking notes. I read a lot as a kid, probably much more than I find time (and headspace) for now, and I’d love to pass it along to her, so all of this is very helpful and encouraging.
I do wonder if you know of any studies/ data on early reading in bilingual children? We speak two languages at home, and I know this affects language development—though I believe it’s worth the possible delay in speaking. And she already loves books, probably because we don’t do any screen time. If you know of any resources/ studies on bilingual language acquisition, specifically, I’d be grateful for any leads.
Had the same question about bilingual kids and early reading.
Had the same question about bilingual kids and early reading.
We have been on largely the same track, about a year ahead (our daughter is 4.5 now). We did some different methods but some are the same. For example, we use spaced repetition heavily (a Leitner box), but have no screen time at all. We are less north-starred on reading for pleasure but indeed that is the intrinsic motivation that carried from about 2/3 into the process. We pursued math in tandem, but ramped that more recently. All in all we have similar results: a very happy, very well self-regulating, very imaginative and communicative and social kid who is empowered with the gift of reading. And we intend to carry this onward towards later education, ie if she is 3 years ahead of school norms now it stands to reason she can stay three years ahead, if not more.
If you ever want to have a call or discussion on technique, happy to exchange tips there. And as an aside, our original idea to explore this came from your article on aristocratic tutoring. So, thanks again for that influence!
Absolutely love hearing this Jonah! And agreed, there’s no reason to not just stay ahead.
This is so beautiful
> screen time, which is usually neutral or negative in the literature
Surely reading blogs is still positive, I hope...
This is the way we taught all three of our sons to read. All of them read before 4 years of age, much to the astonishment of their kindergarten teachers. It didn't hurt that I constantly had a book or three close by for myself to read. It really isn't hard, but it takes time and commitment. Kudos to you for giving Roman this gift.
You did it right. Roman is one lucky young boy and will grow up to a creative , curious, inspiring man. Exceptional job!
This is such a great post (and series). My wife and I are expecting our first child and, since we’re both bookworms, we’re definitely planning to adopt a similar approach.
Our main challenge is that we’re Italians living in the US. We plan to speak Italian at home and English outside, but reading seems trickier.
Teaching our kids to read in Italian might be easier (it’s a highly phonetic language, unlike English) but we’re concerned about their ability to read in English, especially since they’ll be attending school here. Have you (or any other readers) given any thought to teaching bilingual kids how to read?
Very impressive! My son was a voracious reader until we let him have a phone in Middle School (and he started riding the public bus and being more "free range"). How do you plan to handle the phone situation, which often involves how teens stay in touch with each other?
Also, you've set your son up well for the cognitive / intellectual learning of our schooling system, but what about teaching him about relationships and emotional regulation? What might that look like? While we, of course, work on these skills with him, he spends more of his waking hours at school than with us. My son has had a math class almost every single day of his 12 years in school, but he's never had a single class dedicated to emotional and relationship skills -- just a few scattered, short units. I find this to be a gaping hole in our educational system.
I dread the phone issue. Unfortunately, I can't tell you, because I don't know myself. It's probably 7-10 years away before it becomes pressing. But I absolutely plan to avoid it and put it off as long as possible.
As for relationship and emotional regulation: that's definitely a higher priority than reading. A lot of it is how he relates to his sister (we're at the tail end of a recent jealousy phase that is, thank god, ending). But he has friends and groups he goes to. And his extended family. So he plays with other kids all the time. I wonder what a more focused effort on things like emotional regulation would look like (we take more of a "little bit every day approach") but I've seen a lot of toddler behavior and he's pretty normal so far.
In the videos, it's so clear he's having fun. As you note, it's awesome uninterrupted dad time, but I think I see some of the joy of learning there. Beautiful. Inspiring.
I aim for the same "taking off the training wheels" in grammar teaching ESL, and I think it works reasonably well. I aim to start off with lots of really detailed, intensive teaching of the basics of English grammar, so that they can be really confident on simple sentences. I teach the basics of tenses, and the passive voice. Then... I kinda stop. I mean, I give explanations where they seem needed, but once kids have got a vocabulary of a few hundred words and can read coohesive stories, they can mostly figure out what's going on in a sentence without getting bogged down in the grammar.
This all looks great, and I agree that reading is the parenting secret weapon.
Well done to you and your son! This is an amazing demonstration of the effectiveness of your approach to teaching and the aptitude of your son.
I think the nature-nurture dimension of this is also interesting. It sounds like your son has a very conducive temperament and attitude towards your teaching.
I was interested in teaching my eldest daughter to read early. She was verbal early and loves being read to. However, beyond recognising letters, she objected to my every attempt to tutor her to read herself. Now she's school age and learning to read normally, but she's still rarely lets me help her with home practice.
I'm sure my approach could have been better, but trying to make learning fun was always a priority. It's perplexing. I feel like I've had little success passing on my enthusiasm for learning or practice.
This might just be her nature, but I still hope I can still bring her around to be a motivated learner and enjoy learning with me.
This is a tough one, because of course it's impossible for me to really know too much about the relationship to give good advice. Everyone is different. If you want to hear a bit more about this issue, I do talk about this a bit in one of the series (I think part 2). But tricks that might work easily on a toddler (e.g., giving snacks, like berries, to freely munch on during sessions) might not work as well for an older kid.
It's worth considering where you place this on the scale of other parenting concerns and goals and sort of adjust accordingly. Is this a major concern or major goal? Minor? In the middle?
If just enjoying learning together is what you're after, maybe start not with homework but with a few highly-learning orientated outings, like to a science museum? That gets her more used to the "dad is explaining things" mode, but in an environment that's actually pretty interesting to begin with.
Regarding the nature vs. nurture thing: I do think Roman is naturally curious, which helps. But I think it's moreso our dynamic, not his nature, that makes this possible for us. From the very beginning I was doing long explanations of things, very like teaching. I'd just digress and talk all the time, about everything we saw and were doing, outside or in. So it fits my parenting style. It wasn't something too different when it became more formal. With that said, he's definitely not, ahem, easy to get to do things *in general.* If that were the case, then school, and our success with it (well, so far) would just be some special case of having a very compliant kid. He's not a super-compliant kid. He has *very* strong ideas about how things should be, and woe betide me, or anyone, trying to go against those. I do sometimes, of course, because it's necessary (no, you can't just dress in sweatpants and a sweatshirt on a super hot summer day at the beach, you're going to get heat stroke). Not that I would want this to change! I'm glad he's extremely opinionated about how the world should be, when things should happen, and what outcomes he wants; it means he's highly agential, and I try to respect that part of him as much as possible. But I do think he's probably a lot less compliant in general than this process makes him seem, and a lot of its success was just me trying to make it realllly fun in the beginning (easy to do with a toddler, you just throw them in the air periodically) and having a teacher-student-like dynamic in everything else too.