Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Urge to hot-house?!?!?

MegMeg, I have to say that I had similar thoughts about DS9 when he was very young and was talking, reading, etc... early. I kind of equated it to the same pride or excitement I felt when the kids took their first steps or said their first words. You know they're on the brink, and it's an exciting time. You think, "You can do it!!!" and you are eager for them to succeed at it. You also have reasons that it would be beneficial for your DD's abilities to be more obvious to the teachers. I get it. BTDT. I don't think it's anything unhealthy. As other posters have said, it's not hothousing when it's something SHE is doing on her own. And IMHO your attitude is totally normal.

QFT.

In our experience, I don't really think you can "teach a toddler to read." Both our DC learned to read on their own.

From the time DS9 was about 15 months, when we'd tell him it was the last book for the night, he'd say, "One last more, Mama!" and I'd tell him, "OK, this is one last more and then you go to sleep." By about 3, he'd taught himself to read, but wanted us to read to him through about age 5 or 6, for books that were above his level. We still do that from time to time, although the reading time before bed is never enough for him, so he usually just takes the book that we've started and reads it on his own after a couple nights. I've missed out on some books I've really wanted to read that way. *lol*

DS7 has less interest in reading books on his own than DS9, but is very capable of it. We never tried to teach him to read. The ability just seemed to appear sometime between his 4th and 5th birthdays. DS9 claims he taught DS7 to read, but other than the pressure the younger DS felt to keep up with his older brother, I don't think there was a lot DS9 did.

This was our experience anyway. I'll be interested to read what others have seen.

Well, based on my own experience here?

Much the same way you teach anything ELSE to your children.

Now, not all kids are eager to read very young, and for some kids, print materials and being read to are as much about emotional needs as intellectual ones. For my own child, that was not true; as soon as she COULD read, she definitely didn't have much desire for us to read aloud to her ever again. For her, the books were the point-- so we just handed her the key and she wanted to engage on her own terms.

BEFORE that, she wasn't just a kid that wanted to be read the same board books seven or eight times each night. No. She wanted to be read DIFFERENT books-- all day, every day. Relentlessly. I would literally be hoarse from reading to her, and she still wanted more.

So her learning to read was a tremendous relief to both of us-- it was like watching a crow fledge.

HOW did we do that? Roughly the same way that elementary teachers 'do' it, I'd say.

1. print-rich environments, and magnetic letters on the fridge. DD learned all of the phonemes and letter names first. This was very natural and fun. No drill. Just answering her questions and helping her with pronunciation.

2. Later, point-and-enunciate-by-phoneme with phonetically controlled books. Bob books or similar. "C-AAAA-T."


That's it. DD also watched Between the Lions for a while. But only because she LIKED it. At some point, she started reading words to US during reading aloud, and at that point, we stopped 'teaching' and let her do it her way.

I don't know if this is enough for kids that aren't GT, but I know that it was plenty for my DD. HTH.

I described the process I used to teach my 2.75yo to read in a previous post on this thread. I used the same approach as you would to teach reading to an older child (phonics based) but I modified it to make it toddler friendly by making reading lessons into cuddle time with mommy at the computer. Also having letters that were several inches high and farther away than one would normally hold a book is kinder to very young eyes.

This drives me batty too!!! I don't know if it's the desire to have everyone at the same level or the fear/guilt that from parents of kids not reading or teachers that we did something they should of, so to make them okay we become hothousers! And I am SOOO tired of reading the whole "what does early reading mean, it means nothing because I know a kid who did and then is having trouble at school or insert some other anecdotal story here" designed to negate advanced skills.

With DS we did letters and read books, he loved them early. And after 2 or maybe even earlier always followed with my finger so he was seeing and hearing. He was also a classifier, 3rd or 4th word - a point followed by a "at is" what's this, so he built an amazing unspoken vocab before speaking fluently. And we did starfall and we sped through it, he loved it. I didn't think we were doing anything out of the ordinary, but he was. He was processing the same intake as other kids much quicker. He learned whole words, so we thought it was memorization but isn't that reading, he loved and still does, signs, so exit in a restaurant and then he spotted it on the highway, this was around 3, but still, I read early and so thought cool, but not "gifted." so he read basic readers before 4 but went from Clifford to sophisticated 6th grade science books in about 6 months. My mom says I read at 4 but not what he reads. He got to chapter books absurdly quickly. He got basic phonics on star fall but that was before really reading and they are doing familiies and stuff in pre-k but he learns whole words,as someone else mentioned, only needs it identified once. But he is now sounding out on his own to match to his vocab and is doing it correctly. I don't think he is missing anything in terms of roots, he is just learning it in his order relevant to subject not lesson plan - we discussed exo and endo yesterday because of his dreamed up exothermic spacesuit.

I actually find this thread and what the kids here do fascinating. I asked a while back about mathy kids who spontaneously start multiplying, because mine doesn't/ or didn't although he is "ahead" in understanding about numbers. His gifts are verbal but also scientific, he makes connections there like the mathy kids do, I think he learned rules for reading by reading and listening, he was able to get them almost instaneously rather than needing drill and separation of topic into parts, same with science topics. It reminds me for any Madeline l'engle fans of the description of the tesseract with the ant and the string.

DeHe

Hi HelloBaby -- On how to teach a toddler to read... my rant, thank you for giving me a tidy way to insert it:

I notice well meaning parents pointing out letters to their kids -- "this is a D, can you say deeee?". But when does D sound like dee, only when followed by ee. It mostly sounds like duh. If kids learn letter names as the first thing they learn about reading (like when someone reads them their first ABC book and uses the letter names), those sounds have the possibility of getting linked mentally with appearance of the letters. Then if they do memorize that and they see the string of letters d-o-g, and a parent says "can you read it, say the letters quickly", they will say, "deeohjee". Which is not a word, and now they hit failure on their first attempt. This reading thing must be kind of complicated. An adult says, "That was a great try, reading's hard, you'll get it with practice. That was "dog". Hmmm -- Maybe we should learn what letters say".

So then there's a whole extra step of learning what all the letters say, like they are interesting species of animals. So now they know two things about each letter. They also know that letters are unpredictable, they have more than one sound. And there is also a understanding that reading is hard. So next time they see D-o-g they wonder, is it "duhowejee", is it deeoweguh, what is it. They feel tentative. The parent or whomever is teaching is still in the teaching role, the kid hasn't had any success and they've memorized by now 26 upper case names, 26 lower case names, now 26 upper case sounds and 26 lower case sounds. 104 random looking symbols that who knows, might go together in any order and do just about anything. Not to mention if someone accidently has pointed out what ch or th sounds like.

If all kids just learned a very few letters to start, 3 or 4 letters, just learning the sounds, it seems like it would be a lot easier. duh and ohh and guh, maybe mmm. A easy fun game very early helping mom or dad read one or a few words like "dog" and "mom", not some long drawn out two year process of memorizing letters. Then when there is confidence and interest, if it's there, add more. The confidence and good feeling, the "I can read!", was really helpful for DS for getting through the confusing bits like having to be told no, that ch didn't sound like kuh-huh.

Obviously there are lots of kids for whom symbols simply don't translate that early on. Or where memory doesn't keep it long enough to use it later. For whom there is some brain maturation that must take place before the shape D can get associated with a sound. So the ability to read early isn't going to be universal and that's just individuality. But it's not rare, I don't think the ability to read is rare, especially if they would ban the alphabet song.

Sorry -- ranting got away with me again... I just think so many K age kids struggle, thinking it's hard, when if right at the beginning it had been made much simpler then perhaps they would feel more of a can do attitude about it, build on successes, not remember a time when they couldn't read.

Polly

You can call it hot-housing.... We refer to it as feeding the monster! My DS was insatiable at a very early age. He was reading well before two and just as PTP suggested, it didn't seem to make his teachers "get him". In fact his first pre-K teacher viewed him as a PITA, because he refused to conform.

The rule in our house has always been to answer his questions and give him what he wants as far as learning is concerned. Because of this, my now DS8 has an excellent understanding of subjects that many never learn at all. He has chosen many things including mythology, economics and greek. To those that would call it hot-housing, I'd like to see them live with him for a week or two!

I've enjoyed reading everyone's responses and have to admit like HelloBaby I really have no clue how to teach a kid to read. I don't think I every learned the proper method myself either. My mom claims my dad (a former English teacher) "taught" me at some point during preschool but my dad denies it (and my mom's memory is really fault) so I'm not quite sure if I was taught to read early or not.

Regardless of that I know I was much more prone to be a whole word reader and still very much am to this day. I've always been good at figuring out words from the context. I do remember my dad and I always playing games to figure our what an unfamiliar word meant because he'd never tell me, he'd say either figure it out or go get the dictionary. I was always too lazy to get the dictionary so I preferred to figure it out myself. I still do this so much to this day that there has been times that I've read multiple words in DH's language and understood their meaning but I never made a connection to the spoken word until DH had me either read the passage out loud or we were discussing some sort of text.

I have a feeling DD's going down that path but who knows? I'm hoping she just magically figures it out on her own because I really have no clue how to teach phonics since I'm so bad at it myself. She does have some sight words and is really interested in the letters/sounds etc but right now she's much more focused on writing the letters than reading them.

I'm actually probably one of the parents that Polly was saying was teaching their kids incorrectly. However, I don't really get how you'd introduce the letters sounds since it depends on the context of the word? Also, she's read to in both languages (and, unfortunately, she always wants me to be the one reading to her, even in DH's language) so it just adds to the confusion. DD knows all her letters and knows some letters start with certain sounds that correspond to a letter but I really don't get how to proceed from there. Thankfully her interests seem to be in writing/math/puzzles/oral story telling at the moment so I'm hoping this is an issue that comes up later.

LOL-- agreed.
I call it "I'm not driving this bus; I'm merely along for the ride." Sometimes it can feel like Mr. Toad's WILD RIDE, but that's another story...
After you've lived with one of these voracious kids as a toddler/preschooler, it seems CRAZY to think that you even could "prevent" them from learning. I mean, maybe you could, but wouldn't it require the use of a sensory deprivation chamber?? That seems kind of, uh... wrong.



(I also like what Polly was saying about teaching little ones using a limited number of naturally more stable phonemes.... after all, how many different sounds DOES "d" make in the English language? Not many... With a bilingual household, I'd just skip the magnetic letters stage of things, or plan to include multiple phonemes/languages when you do "what thing start with that sound?" using letters. The one that kills me with alphabet books is U. U doesn't say "Unicorn" in ANYTHING but little girls' cute alphabet books. PHTTTTTH. And it sure isn't an YOOM-brella. LOL. I'd stay away from phonemes like "g" and "j" since those are less stable and/or because they are not the same in, say, Spanish and English, if I were working in both languages.)

Something else that is a very serious problem with very young, fluent readers, though...



vetting all that reading material. Because while some of them are content to read at a moderate rate, others rapidly begin to read in volumes that are nothing short of staggering. (We kept records of everything DD read-- she'd "put it in the book box" and I'd reshelve it after recording it-- the average was 1200-4000 pages a month when she was 6.)

My daughter was reading faster than my husband by the time she was seven, and was completely capable of reading adult materials at that point, probably sooner. Obviously, however, she was still seven.
At ten, she read darned near as fast as I do (and that is REALLY saying something, as I can polish off most best-sellers in a long afternoon).

Anyway. My point here is that I can't completely pre-read EVERYTHING that she reads. Just not possible-- and really hasn't been since she was about 8-9. I know enough to examine some genres very carefully (Sci-fi/fantasy and 'teen/YA' books in particular tend to have REALLY explicit content that is better suited to trashy romance novels. Not that there's anything wrong with trashy romance novels... but I don't think they're appropriate for my preteen).

I mine my friends' reading and my own for ideas. There are authors writing in the adult genre that frequently do NOT include much explicit material in their work. DD has enjoyed some of those things. We just have to be somewhat cautious about turning her completely loose with a library card. So we have some house rules that apply to reading content for her. If it's YA or adult, she has to at least ask us about it first, so that we can let her know if we give it a green, yellow, or red light for her personally. (This is individual and relates to a particular child's OE and maturity.)

Just wanted to give a head's up to those with toddlers/preschoolers that this journey can take you some very strange places. These are places that most parents never even know about, and so you might get "that look" even from librarians when you ask about appropriate content, or gently hint that you are "running out of" materials. Luckily for us, we have a children's librarian that has been a gem over the years. I wish I could clone her and put her in every public library in the world.

Advice on that front, just in general terms, is to look for children's materials with a copyright date prior to 1980; those tend to be less explicit or "edgy" overall, and more appropriate for younger readers. (Do be aware that violence or discrimination may be somewhat more open/accepted in those offerings, however.) My daughter burned through a lot of the pre-1970 Newbery books, L. Frank Baum's Oz series, Maud Hart Lovelace's books, The Boxcar Children, Trixie Belden, etc. As a bonus, they also tend to be written at a correspondingly higher literacy/Lexile level for the interest level. Lexile lists are useless for kids like mine. (Unless, of course, anyone truly thinks that Madame Bovary might really have been a good idea for my then-4th grade seven year old. Didn't think so. LOL.)