I think the desires and wishes of the child matter much more than what the parents want.
I have two kids. The first could read at two and was reading chapter books at four and adult books (e.g. To Kill a Mockingbird) at eight. By nine-years-old he was completely off reading and has barely read a book since.
The second didn't read until six and until she was about ten or eleven she still preferred to have me read to her. She just got her Master's but the other day she said she wishes I would still read to her. She loves stories but just doesn't enjoy reading. I think having two children is the cure for thinking that parents can determine how their children develop.
They can both read just fine. They just don't enjoy it. I'm a book-addict and am always in a book. Different strokes etc.
I'm so so excited to read this series, Erik. I suspect it will be my favorite of yours, perhaps tied with your series on Aristocratic tutoring.
I'm expecting my first child any day now (expected due date April 26), and I need as many influences like this in my life as I can get! Thanks for writing about it, and I look forward to your future posts :)
Wonderful essay, Erik. I taught my daughter to read early on, simply because I love reading and because *no one had told me not to.* In retrospect, I can't imagine leaving that sacred task up to schools.
Now, my daughter is no aristocratic wunderkind, but she thoroughly enjoyed reading Roald Dahl and the Harry Potter books from a young age, and I actually have a video of her reading the first page of my copy of Anna Karenina aloud when she was 8 or 9.
I hope you continue to enjoy the process of teaching your own kids, and I look forward to future updates.
Thank you Erik! I taught both of my children to read using phonics and they were, like your son, reading by the age of 2. It was amazing how much easier it made their schooling and I remember how proud both kids were when they were given the longest speaking part in the Kindergarten end of year show because they could read complex paragraphs. My sister and I were both taught how to read using phonics by our parents almost 6 decades ago and I still have the phonics cards they used. It fostered a lifelong love of learning and reading.
When I heard that 80% of adults do not read a single book in a year's time, I was dumbfounded. How is that possible? If it is true, then if course children don't know how to read: there is no model in their lives for it. And non-reading adults produce non-reading kids because they neither value nor comprehend reading as a life skill. Maybe we need adult reading apps.
This is of course just anecdotal, but my parents taught me to read in the 2-3 range (sort of accidentally, I think) and my experience of reading comprehension in school was that I always 'topped out' the grade levels (like they couldn't find something I couldn't read) and down the line, the English part of the GRE felt like filling out a form, in that I couldn't believe that the questions were actually questions, they were so obvious to me. I don't think I'm amazingly like 'generally intelligent' or whatever, I don't think I understand what any of that means - but I do think reading is like a *learnable* (by anyone) "how to learn" skill which makes the rest of school easier...
Thank you for publishing this article. Our 1 year old has a box of toys and a box of books. 99 out of 100 times she goes for the the box of books and starts flipping through the pages. We read to her every day and night. Screen time is non existent and maybe a few minutes every week. Reading has to be an essential life skill.
This was a great read, but very disheartening. Even in my own life I notice how much I've fallen behind in my reading skills, as I've spent many years reading very little. Since going through grad school and now my job, (plus loving being here on Substack) I now spend a substantial part of my day reading. It's extremely rewarding and I know how much better my thought processes are, how much more I learn, and how significantly open minded and creative it's made me. Reading is so important and I couldn't believe the statistics you shared about how far most kids are behind on reading levels. I knew it was low, but now that bad. This will be a huge motivator for me on how important it will be to read daily with my kids.
Hi Erik, thanks for sharing this. Living in Germany now though, the general consensus is to leave academic stuff until school time. For early childhood education, we believe in letting them develop naturally. About teaching to swim or bike, I let my child pick it up themselves too as they become developmentally appropriate. It's all about having a rich environment that enable that when the time comes. I read a lot to my children, having the love for reading, and I am also always torn about wanting to teach them to read ASAP while I also believe in not pushing it. Reading is a completely different thing from human natural skills, it requires basically decoding of cryptic codes. Anyway, I'm kind of on the fence here. In Malaysia where I am from, kids start learning to read at 3/4 when they go kindergarten, while here nobody does until they go to school at 7. But it's proven that there is no difference in capability and ability later in life whether one started reading earlier or later (I believe it was some studies done in Denmark, unfortunately I can't find it now to share here). Though I myself am really thankful I was able to read my own books even before school and I am an avid reader, my parents not so. So yeah, I don't know, but for now my oldest son, 5, just told me he wants to learn to read so I'm gonna start to finally teach him! I did before that exposed him to phonics already via games and such. I guess in the end, same for everything else in parenting, we do what's best for us and our children, only we will know!
Animals are sensitive readers of nature's language.. As a self professed nature person and activist who participates whenever, wherever and however possible to the GREAT LOVE STORY that's being written to the earth, the songs that are being sung to the earth, AND as a mother, I believe it's extremely important to teach one's child the language of the wild places and the wild creatures. If you're living in a city flat, buy a geranium for your balcony. Buy a pair goldfish and begin teaching your child the empathic language of loving what lives in those places. He and all of us will benefit! If he doesn't print or write, have him make some art... simple paste and cut, or water colors..
I think it might be worth mentioning that teaching young children to read is cool, but parents need to be steered away from using reading skill as a metric in the development of young children. This is especially true if it's at the expense of social-emotional learning, which has equally (even greater) health outcomes in later life.
Teaching young children to read earlier, and instilling it as fun is brilliant and could really change the outcomes of a generation and beyond, but it should be encouraged and treated with equal importance and the social emotional that is so critical in years 0-5 (and beyond).
As the father of an 8 month old, I'm very excited by this series. This might be an edge case, but we are raising a bilingual child, so I wonder how that should play into such reading learning plans and language acquisition in general. We live in Denmark (mothers language), so I imagine danish will become my daughters dominant language. But I am very keen for her to speak Icelandic (my native tongue) as well and for Icelandic to be what we speak together. I wonder how these plans should figure into trying to teach her to read as well?
I think you'll find results vary more than you might expect. We taught our daughter letter sounds early and spent plenty of time reading to and with her, but the idea that sounds could come together into words just didn't click with her until age 4, no matter how we tried to teach it. Which is fine, obviously -- that's plenty early by any standard. But I'm afraid your n=1 sample size might be leading you to overly strong beliefs about the efficacy of your methods.
Bravo! It's obvious that you enjoy being a father and that your connection with your son is wonderfully playful and yes, rich with learning. I became a single working mom, an exec, with a child who had severe asthma. I literally came within minutes of losing her. The benefits of being a mom, no matter how tired, kept me inspired. You're only at the beginning of the extraordinary journey of being parent. My daughter and I taught each other alot... and yes, some of that was helpful in reconnecting me with the playfulness of my inner child!
This was so beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes. I grew up dyslexic and with no real help. I still struggle to this day. Your children are blessed.
I think the desires and wishes of the child matter much more than what the parents want.
I have two kids. The first could read at two and was reading chapter books at four and adult books (e.g. To Kill a Mockingbird) at eight. By nine-years-old he was completely off reading and has barely read a book since.
The second didn't read until six and until she was about ten or eleven she still preferred to have me read to her. She just got her Master's but the other day she said she wishes I would still read to her. She loves stories but just doesn't enjoy reading. I think having two children is the cure for thinking that parents can determine how their children develop.
They can both read just fine. They just don't enjoy it. I'm a book-addict and am always in a book. Different strokes etc.
I'm so so excited to read this series, Erik. I suspect it will be my favorite of yours, perhaps tied with your series on Aristocratic tutoring.
I'm expecting my first child any day now (expected due date April 26), and I need as many influences like this in my life as I can get! Thanks for writing about it, and I look forward to your future posts :)
Wonderful essay, Erik. I taught my daughter to read early on, simply because I love reading and because *no one had told me not to.* In retrospect, I can't imagine leaving that sacred task up to schools.
Now, my daughter is no aristocratic wunderkind, but she thoroughly enjoyed reading Roald Dahl and the Harry Potter books from a young age, and I actually have a video of her reading the first page of my copy of Anna Karenina aloud when she was 8 or 9.
I hope you continue to enjoy the process of teaching your own kids, and I look forward to future updates.
Thank you Erik! I taught both of my children to read using phonics and they were, like your son, reading by the age of 2. It was amazing how much easier it made their schooling and I remember how proud both kids were when they were given the longest speaking part in the Kindergarten end of year show because they could read complex paragraphs. My sister and I were both taught how to read using phonics by our parents almost 6 decades ago and I still have the phonics cards they used. It fostered a lifelong love of learning and reading.
When I heard that 80% of adults do not read a single book in a year's time, I was dumbfounded. How is that possible? If it is true, then if course children don't know how to read: there is no model in their lives for it. And non-reading adults produce non-reading kids because they neither value nor comprehend reading as a life skill. Maybe we need adult reading apps.
This is of course just anecdotal, but my parents taught me to read in the 2-3 range (sort of accidentally, I think) and my experience of reading comprehension in school was that I always 'topped out' the grade levels (like they couldn't find something I couldn't read) and down the line, the English part of the GRE felt like filling out a form, in that I couldn't believe that the questions were actually questions, they were so obvious to me. I don't think I'm amazingly like 'generally intelligent' or whatever, I don't think I understand what any of that means - but I do think reading is like a *learnable* (by anyone) "how to learn" skill which makes the rest of school easier...
Thank you for publishing this article. Our 1 year old has a box of toys and a box of books. 99 out of 100 times she goes for the the box of books and starts flipping through the pages. We read to her every day and night. Screen time is non existent and maybe a few minutes every week. Reading has to be an essential life skill.
This was a great read, but very disheartening. Even in my own life I notice how much I've fallen behind in my reading skills, as I've spent many years reading very little. Since going through grad school and now my job, (plus loving being here on Substack) I now spend a substantial part of my day reading. It's extremely rewarding and I know how much better my thought processes are, how much more I learn, and how significantly open minded and creative it's made me. Reading is so important and I couldn't believe the statistics you shared about how far most kids are behind on reading levels. I knew it was low, but now that bad. This will be a huge motivator for me on how important it will be to read daily with my kids.
Thanks, Erik!
Hi Erik, thanks for sharing this. Living in Germany now though, the general consensus is to leave academic stuff until school time. For early childhood education, we believe in letting them develop naturally. About teaching to swim or bike, I let my child pick it up themselves too as they become developmentally appropriate. It's all about having a rich environment that enable that when the time comes. I read a lot to my children, having the love for reading, and I am also always torn about wanting to teach them to read ASAP while I also believe in not pushing it. Reading is a completely different thing from human natural skills, it requires basically decoding of cryptic codes. Anyway, I'm kind of on the fence here. In Malaysia where I am from, kids start learning to read at 3/4 when they go kindergarten, while here nobody does until they go to school at 7. But it's proven that there is no difference in capability and ability later in life whether one started reading earlier or later (I believe it was some studies done in Denmark, unfortunately I can't find it now to share here). Though I myself am really thankful I was able to read my own books even before school and I am an avid reader, my parents not so. So yeah, I don't know, but for now my oldest son, 5, just told me he wants to learn to read so I'm gonna start to finally teach him! I did before that exposed him to phonics already via games and such. I guess in the end, same for everything else in parenting, we do what's best for us and our children, only we will know!
Animals are sensitive readers of nature's language.. As a self professed nature person and activist who participates whenever, wherever and however possible to the GREAT LOVE STORY that's being written to the earth, the songs that are being sung to the earth, AND as a mother, I believe it's extremely important to teach one's child the language of the wild places and the wild creatures. If you're living in a city flat, buy a geranium for your balcony. Buy a pair goldfish and begin teaching your child the empathic language of loving what lives in those places. He and all of us will benefit! If he doesn't print or write, have him make some art... simple paste and cut, or water colors..
I think it might be worth mentioning that teaching young children to read is cool, but parents need to be steered away from using reading skill as a metric in the development of young children. This is especially true if it's at the expense of social-emotional learning, which has equally (even greater) health outcomes in later life.
Teaching young children to read earlier, and instilling it as fun is brilliant and could really change the outcomes of a generation and beyond, but it should be encouraged and treated with equal importance and the social emotional that is so critical in years 0-5 (and beyond).
As the father of an 8 month old, I'm very excited by this series. This might be an edge case, but we are raising a bilingual child, so I wonder how that should play into such reading learning plans and language acquisition in general. We live in Denmark (mothers language), so I imagine danish will become my daughters dominant language. But I am very keen for her to speak Icelandic (my native tongue) as well and for Icelandic to be what we speak together. I wonder how these plans should figure into trying to teach her to read as well?
I think you'll find results vary more than you might expect. We taught our daughter letter sounds early and spent plenty of time reading to and with her, but the idea that sounds could come together into words just didn't click with her until age 4, no matter how we tried to teach it. Which is fine, obviously -- that's plenty early by any standard. But I'm afraid your n=1 sample size might be leading you to overly strong beliefs about the efficacy of your methods.
Bravo! It's obvious that you enjoy being a father and that your connection with your son is wonderfully playful and yes, rich with learning. I became a single working mom, an exec, with a child who had severe asthma. I literally came within minutes of losing her. The benefits of being a mom, no matter how tired, kept me inspired. You're only at the beginning of the extraordinary journey of being parent. My daughter and I taught each other alot... and yes, some of that was helpful in reconnecting me with the playfulness of my inner child!
This was so beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes. I grew up dyslexic and with no real help. I still struggle to this day. Your children are blessed.
Oh you're doing this without spaced repetition (previously I wrote https://chrislakin.blog/p/spaced-repetition-for-teaching-two), that's neat