Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments reading with a 3 year old

DD3 learned the alphabet around 20 months old. Not sure how she learned it. We did not try to teach her although we sang songs and watched videos and a few books that had the alphabet in it. It was not our intention for her to learn it. We just did what she wanted to do. No idea that she may even be interested in those letters. She knew upper and lower case. She started reading and spelling a few words shortly after. She has words that she can sight read. I introduced to her phonics through the Starfall sight. I myself did not learn through phonics and hence learned with her. She knows all the sounds learned them in about a week, but does not sound words out. Just a tiny bit. About three months ago her attitude changed. Not sure how to describe it but kind of a defeated attitude. I had bought the very easy reader, Mud, on suggestion of a psychologist. About a month ago I showed her the book. Through the pictures etc. she read the book. Again at one point she got this defeated attitude. So I offered her a star for each sentence she read. She has to get the stars off her self which is really good for her fine motor as they are a bit strange. She has been able to manipulate a mouse since 2 � but has a hard time with other fine motor. Not at all interested in drawing but can type her name on the computer and text me small messages such as Hi mom etc. So now we have started on some of those pre-readers. She likes getting the stickers. She seems to enjoy reading, and Mud was a good book�. But not sure how much is for the stickers and how much is really reading. It seems like there is some kind of hump we are trying to cross. I just was looking for feedback on what I am doing and any takes on what this �hump� might be. She gives up on a lot of things earlier than I like. Also looking for the next reader. I go to the store and they all seem really dumb. She needs short still. One sentence per page or so. Thanks... Thanks for reading the long post!

Simple books that seem "dumb" to you might be an avenue of certain success for her. Maybe visit the library and see what books spark her. My dd loved Biscuit at that age. The library should have a great selection for her to choose from.

Sounds to me like a classic case of perfectionism getting in the way. For a 3yo, I'd take all the pressure off and just read to her. She'll still be soaking in information about how to read without the performance anxiety.

This might also be a good time to start thinking about outside activities that involve a great deal of mistake-making and practicing. There might be a dance or gymnastics class around you that takes them this young.

I wouldn't worry about what seems "dumb" to you, but instead let her help pick out some of the early reader type books. Are you reading with her? One of the things we've been told over and over and over again by all of the teachers our kids' have had is that the best thing you can do for your children is to read *to* them, not just help them read themselves. When our ds was three (and younger) we read to him sooo so much. And reading to your child is where you can bring in the "not dumb" books - books that are challenging in concepts, books with vivid imagery, books that come alive when you read.

Another thought, "humps" aren't all that unusual (in my experience) - we all hit them every now and then as we learn new things. Sometimes a good way to deal with a hump is to ignore it and take a different path. If she's hitting some kind of block with reading at the moment, let it sit for awhile and instead focus on something else - art, cooking, music, pre-math skills, playing games etc. OR just having fun lol!

Take my advice with a grain of salt, but fwiw only one of my children was trying to read at 3. My ds didn't even know his alphabet at 3, but by his last semester of kindergarten he was reading advanced chapter books and by the time he was in 3rd grade he was reading college-level textbooks. Reading doesn't have to come early in life to be advanced I'm also not sure ds ever really used phonics or sounding out words, yet he learned to read basically on his own - when he was truly ready.

Also, fwiw, my dds loved the Bob books when they were first learning to read. If your dd is feeling defeated, they may be a format that would work well because all the sentences in each individual book follow a pattern (-at, etc). My kids also watched a PBS show that was all about simple words - I wish I could remember the name of the show!

Best wishes,

polarbear

I tend to agree with Dude. If your little has the perfectionist bug, she may be unwilling to try for fear of failure. This is a hard thing in really small children as it's impossible to rationally explain that failure is part of learning. She may not want to show you she can read until she thinks she has it perfect.

My son, now 8 had it bad. I spent lots of time modeling making mistakes, then fixing them to learn. Playing "Uh, Oh Look what I did wrong" then correcting it without consequence. I would let her take her own time, read if she wants to or not. If you read aloud, you can easily screw up a word that you know she knows, give her time to register your error, then fix it and laugh.

Kids that are perfectionists tend to believe that they are better off not to try than fail. You need to convince her that everyone messes up sometimes, it's part of life.

word world is an awesome show on PBS

Word World is the show I was thinking of!

polarbear

I agree with Dude and others, focus more on reading to her and let her lead you to the amount/level of reading she wants to do on her own. You could also encourage her to jump in when you are reading if she sees a word she knows/wants to try to read. Sometimes I ask, do you see any words you know on this page? And then after DS would tell me which ones, I would let him read those words and I would read the rest. Sometimes I would challenge him if there was a word he didn't point out that I know he knew or could figure out. Sometimes he would take the bait, sometimes not. If he didn't I just read that word too. He also really liked to repeat after me, which I always thought was a little weird but have since learned is a common learning to read strategy.

My goal has always been to make reading fun. I want my kids to be life-long readers and to discover the joy of reading. Especially at 3, I would really recommend emphasizing book enjoyment over performance.

Also, I am not sure I would attach the fine motor skill challenge of peeling the star off herself, to the reward you are trying to hand out. It seems like rewarding the achievement of a difficult task with another difficult task might not be the best approach. In fact, I would not really "reward" the reading because to me it should be a reward in itself. Praise from you for sticking with it and not giving up should be sufficient. And again, if it isn't fun for her, I would recommend choosing a different approach.

And, strangely the sounding out of words can take time to figure out even when the child knows all of the sounds individually. Something about putting them together can be tricky. Then all of a sudden it clicks and they jump forward! But the time frame from each learning point to the next is very individual.

There's a lot of research showing that rewarding people for doing things is a good way to put them off choosing to do those things - I think that's OK if everyone knows that the thing being rewarded isn't fun and wouldn't be done by choice, but needs to be done for some reason, but I really wouldn't reward reading!

One thing I remember from my very early reader was how easily he tired. It happened often that in one paragraph he'd read words I had no idea he could cope with, but a couple of paragraphs later he'd start to need help with "and" and "the". I think you need to remember that reading at all at this age is unusual, and that the way the skill develops may not be what we expect, or what the writers of easy reading books expected.

Our policy was never ever to push him to read more than he wanted to, *but*:
- to allow him to read to himself in bed at night, when nothing else except going to sleep was permitted;
- to be willing to help him read a story if he wanted another story after our voices were tired (really - he was insatiable :-)

Reading is inherently so much fun that you really don't need to give incentives for it. I understand being concerned about the defeated look, but TBH I'd rather take that as a signal to back off than as a reason to push through. She's too young, IMO, to be expected to understand intellectually about keeping working at things which are hard (though I'm sure someone here will have had a kid that age who did understand that!)

I think she has some perfectionism for sure. I feel that this is more about that frustration just before the light goes on. Like the week before they crawl and they are just uncomfortable. Her defeated stuff was more when I was not reading with her. I brought out the early reader because it seemed something needed to change. It has increased her own playing with the word puzzles etc. I found her in the kitchen dancing and twirling singing "I am learning to read" The stars happened by accident as I felt like I wanted a successful experience when she "read" her first full book. Now I just don't know how to get out of it. Any good first readers like Mud that are fun and humorous. She does not really go for Bob books. Thanks