I'd love to see a source / more information about your claim regarding kids of age 4.
Young children learning to read isn't usually about their own innate ability. It's about whether they have someone who reliably puts in the hours with them. It probably also helps to model the behaviour, so they see you reading books yourself in your spare time.
You end up with no books that are an appropriate reading challenge but also developmentally appropriate, and a kid who is really bored in school and not using the time to build good study and homework habits.
I think it's a neat party trick to have a kid who is 4 and a fluent reader, and that it has some utility... but I might emphasize different things if I had it to do over again.
At the same time, calling out math problems to the back seat was a way that I kept kids busy during road trips, and I wouldn't change that at all :D
What? It's just the opposite. What about the books that a parent typically reads kids that age at bedtime? Those are generally above the reading level, but at the developmental level.
Indeed, the whole annoying thing with kids learning to read is that -- at least for kids who have been read to frequently -- their taste in books is well above the "see spot run" level that their reading is at.
At age 4 and 5, my kids were into Ramona, Roald Dahl, Charlotte's Web, Pipi Longstocking, etc. It took them til age 6 or 7 to be able to read those comfortably.
Learning to read early is in no way a curse, or a "party trick." For my kids, and many others, it has instilled a love of reading. Also the notion of a "party trick" is gross, like it's something the parents do to show off. The kids who learn to read early do so because they are interested in it.
> At the same time, calling out math problems to the back seat was a way that I kept kids busy during road trips, and I wouldn't change that at all
Ah, so you're just biased against kids who read early.
Conversely, rather than be held back by not reading as early, I wish there were more opportunities for students who were well past their peers but not so much that they could skip a grade. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks to not having much choice in schools is being stuck with the lowest common denominator of expectation for students.
I also think a lot more kids would be academically able to skip a grade than currently do. Skipping forward can be a nightmare socially, unless you do the skip really early and not more than a year or so ahead.
When I was in 3rd grade the teacher actually told my parents to move me to a better school if they could - and they were willing/able to afford the tuition to send me to a good private school, but I liked my friends and refused to switch. I wish there were a good way to disentangle the social and babysitting elements of school from the academic ones somewhat. That could allow students to progress at a more personalized pace.
All those "adult-directed" books, heavy on pictures, etc-- are not optimal for a skilled early reader. Yes, they can read them, but they read them fast.
There's also what e.g. Lexile calls "NC" https://lexile.com/parents-students/find-books-at-the-right-... -- nonconforming. These are great. Simpler, developmentally-appropriate situations, higher level writing. But there's not many... E.g. you can't even find the book they name as an example anymore.
When you have a kid who is ready to read chapter books with long words, but all of them talk about social situations he doesn't really have the experience to understand, you have a problem. My boys would read books and know everything that happened in them... but really not be able to understand why someone would do something described or how they'd be feeling in a given situation.
> Learning to read early is in no way a curse, or a "party trick."
It's not a curse, but it's not well-correlated with better outcomes.
> For my kids, and many others, it has instilled a love of reading.
My kids eventually got back to a love of reading, but the hole in reading material around 2nd grade and having to read below-level books was a speedbump in it. And it's still hard. My 4th grader should be reading young adult books, but he still thinks kissing is gross...
> like it's something the parents do to show off.
Oh, trust me, that applies too, to plenty of families.
> Ah, so you're just biased against kids who read early.
??? I say that my kids read very early above. My kids could have read Charlotte's Web at age 5, and given you the play by play, and known an appropriate amount of the vocabulary... but they would not understand any of the subtexts or real messages until much later.
sure, teenage romance novels are inappropriate for a 10 year old, but there are plenty of adult adventure stories that do make sense to a 10 year old even if they don't understand every detail in it.
white fang, horatio hornblower, adventures of people traveling the world on bikes, horseback or other ways were among my favorites where i can't remember anything inappropriate for any age. i think huckleberry finn too, but i didn't read that one myself.
in fact i don't even remember reading anything that was targeted at a particular age. but even among childrens books i think there is plenty of choices with a wide age range. roald dahl, erich kästner and many other well known childrensbook authors have written stories that are enjoyable at a wide age range.
i find it hard to imagine that there wasn't anything enjoyable for your 2nd grader.
Do most kids actually feel it's gross, or do adults and other kids just condition them to say they feel it's gross?
I remember in kindergarten a girl named Meghan playing some kind of trick where she trapped my hand and then kissed me as if it were some kind of punishment. I remember feeling a bit awkward, but also good about it. Meghan was the one girl I invited to my birthday party later that year.
I remember starting to tell my mom the story about being kissed that day after school, being a bit worried she might make fun of me. I'm sure she was just trying to help me process my feelings, but I felt like the way she asked me how I felt was very leading. I got worried my mom would make fun of me and so I lied and said I found it gross.
Now, I think misread my mom, and maybe I'm projecting, but I think a lot of kids like kissing much earlier than they'll admit.
The next year, we went to different schools. That year we prepared for at least a couple weeks for the first teacher going into space. We all went into the school library to watch the Space Shuttle launch. It exploded. Teachers were visibly shocked. I announced that it exploded, and a teacher told me "No, Karl, we don't know what happened. Let's go back to our classrooms now." and I responded "Those are the rocket boosters. The rest of it is gone. It exploded." With 20/20 hindsight, I would have prepared something better than a transparent lie, but it's hard to blame them for lying. At that age, I didn't have a sense that adults lied, but I realized sometimes they hid information from kids. I had heard rumors that "Santa is just your parents" from older kids. That was around the time I brought up the reality of Santa with my parents, and their response was "well, what do you think?". So, I didn't feel lied to or angry about the shuttle explosion, but I remember feeling confused as to why something was being hidden.
Another year or two later, my grandmother became very ill. I remember coming down to the basement quite a bit after my bedtime and finding my dad at the Apple IIe. When he asked me why I wasn't sleeping, I told him I was worried, and asked him how we knew heaven existed. Thank Goodness Dad gave me an honest age-appropriate answer, explaining that he hoped there was a heaven but didn't have any evidence, and trying to explain that worrying about it wasn't fruitful. Anything less honest could really have screwed up my trust in any authority figures for a long long time.
In general, I think kids understand way more than they let on.
Addendum: Meghan and I were back in the same school starting in 9th grade, and we were in the same 9th grade science class. She told me "My mom said we were in the same preschool." I'm not sure if she was trying to see if I remembered my crush. I wasn't interested in her in high school, but I did remember that the Gobots paint-by-numbers painting she gave me as a birthday present in kindergarten was still hidden away between my bookshelf and the wall. No socially awkward 14 year old is going to admit to a mad kindergarten crush on a girl who doesn't remember who they are, so my response was just something like "Oh, okay."
> I responded "Those are the rocket boosters. The rest of it is gone. It exploded."
Of course, the truth is far worse-- the rest of it was not gone.
I agree that we should try and tell kids the whole and honest story about as much as possible.
And kissing might not be "gross", per se, but it sure is weird, and not something that we really understood back then-- one of those adult things that was kind of out of our world. And did we have the tools to explain that nuance, when people are looking at us funny, when we're 6?
You seem to have been implying in all your posts that it's not just "not well-correlated," but that it's explicitly correlated with worse outcomes.
Use of such scientific terminology implies that there is evidence of this. Is there?
I'm saying there's barely any signal of being an early reader years later in academic performance (and some of what little remains may be explained by those with disabilities being less represented in early readers), and there's plenty of small practical downsides. Therefore, it's something that's OK if it happens, but quite alright if you go down another path.
And there's especially little evidence of receiving explicit reading instruction in school earlier results in better academic outcomes. But lots and lots of parents now try and seek out more "academic" kindergartens and pressure their kindergarten to spend more time on literacy skills.
You can even find studies that show minor disadvantages in later performance from earlier reading instruction (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08852... ) but I don't really believe these.
You said it leads to "You end up with a kid who is really bored in school and not using the time to build good study and homework habits."
That's what I've been pushing back against. Perhaps in your personal anecdote it did, but I don't think it's fair to say that parents should discourage their kids from reading early because they'll get bored in school and do worse.
I don't think there's any evidence that your personal "downsides" are necessarily the norm in any way, or that they are worse than the "downsides" of a kid who takes their time learning to read (which can also exist).
I agree that there's no evidence that there's an advantage, but you've certainly been saying that there are disadvantages, and I don't agree that those are much beyond anecdotes.
They do show up in the study I posted, and there's about 60 years of literature on a high prevalence of later underachievement, increased truancy, etc on students that enter school above academic level.
You can even find individual very alarming data points, like https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2713445/
(Please don't jump on me for it being 1920's era education; I understand the limitations, but if you want results from a lifelong study, the early data points need to be a long time ago).
> but I don't think it's fair to say that parents should discourage their kids from reading early because they'll get bored in school and do worse.
I've never said that. Indeed, again, I've said mine read early. If I had it to do over again, I might lend a little less support to reading in particular and choose other things to spend time on.
> you've certainly been saying that there are disadvantages, and I don't agree that those are much beyond anecdotes.
I haven't been trying to say that. Based on both the literature and my experiences, I personally believe that it's quantitively neutral with respect to later academics, and that there are some qualitative downsides and upsides. In the parent community at my school, there are some that very aggressively push reading at their 4 year old, and--- given the literature and my experience, I believe there is no reason to do this and it may create harms.
This is just an anecdote, but... I have 3 kids that are incredibly academically strong according to the assessments of their teachers... who are also way quicker than most of the students I teach to burst into tears at the first sign of difficulty, and are able to get away with much lower levels of attention given to their work than peers. There will be a reckoning, at some point, when they end up facing appropriately challenging material in school and don't know how to deal with it.
What are things you'd have wished to spend time on instead?
So, maybe substitute reading to them for some of that time, and looking at science books, and playing with microscopes, etc. Note we did all of those things too, but I'd change the proportions a bit.
It is true I read a bunch of books in early elementary years that I definitely did not have the ability to understand on a higher level, like Animal Farm and Frankenstein. But I still think I got a lot out of the experience. It's funny because I was totally glued to those books at the time, but then when we started reading "real" books for school around grade 7 I lost interest. Perhaps my early fascination was more with the mechanics of language than it was with any broader themes or symbolism. Or maybe I just hate being told to do things, probably a bit of both.
So yeah, I think reading early can be great and if the child is showing an interest in that it is great to encourage. I wish the teachers/admins at my school were as helpful as my parents/peers, but instead they forced everybody to do assignments using a particular pool of books each year based on age. In first grade my mom ended up doing a "book report" on Make Way for Ducklings because I straight up refused.
I do agree it shouldn't be pressured if the child isn't into it though. Different kids are different, so of course schooling is going to require different approaches.
See, and that's its own bummer. Make Way for Ducklings is a gorgeous book. Its Lexile measure isn't shabby for a 1st grader, either... but it's not a great book for kids to read on their own (hence it is "AD" -- or adult-directed).
It's also only very poorly correlated with better academic outcomes overall.
I don't see, and haven't found in relevant reading or experience, any way reading that early is more valuable to the child than anything else they could be taught.
All it really announces is what skills the most influential adults in the kid's life value.
Just don't push them, if they don't want to. If they show an interest, feel free to teach them.
As best I can remember, I taught myself to read by nagging my parents constantly about what certain words were and how to spell them. This would have been around four years of age. I knew it was a secret adult code with mystical powers. And I wanted in real bad.
I do wonder if the child simply wanting to learn to read is a factor. Perhaps some do not see any use in it, just misery. For me, while I was a quick learner compared to most, it still wasn't easy. I remember frustration and, because I was four or five, some literal tears. If I did not have a strong motivation, or if I had more difficulty with the concept, or if I had a really negative experience, would I have been more prone to developing a mental block of some kind, or an aversion to the effort?
Expose them to numbers, letters and reading. If they are interested they’ll soak it up and learn almost by themselves. If not, it’s fine to not push it - as you say it will get hammered into them in due course.
Learn to listen to your child :)
Sometimes we do things just for fun.
If your kid enjoys learning how to read, and you have the time, by all means, teach them.
I don't know if I knew any math at that point, but I feel like I could probably count up to 5.
But I was the oldest, so neither of them figured out that was unusual until my pre-k teachers pulled them aside after my first day and were like, "Did you know smeej can read? Not look at pictures and make up a story. Lots of kids do that. I mean books without pictures." My folks thought nothing of it.
Even now, I'm told the way I read is weird. I don't read a word at a time. I read blocks of text several lines long all at once. I don't have to subvocalize each word.
In the end, it all comes down to how this child is developing, not how some abstract theoretical child "ought" to develop.
The trouble with schooling is that it's trying to make one size fit too many. Separating classrooms by ages instead of educating children in flexible cohorts based on interest and skill makes kids who develop later--or even just who are chronologically younger than most of their classmates--feel "dumb," but it doesn't have to be that way.
There's no reason any child needs to learn at the same pace as any other, or even that children need to learn subjects in some sort of balance.
It might simplify things for the instructors, and their instructors, but it happens at the expense of the children.
Hello, spirit brother!
> Separating classrooms by ages instead of educating children in flexible cohorts based on interest and skill makes kids who develop later--or even just who are chronologically younger than most of their classmates--feel "dumb," but it doesn't have to be that way.
I agree this would be superior to what we have (here in the US.)
I won't say it's possible for every kid but it's definitely not impossible.
I think intelligence is a factor, but the innate desire to read is critical.
(In contrast, some of my German friends boast proudly of riding a bike at that age.)
In what language? English, Mandarin, Malay?
I'd be amazed if it were Mandarin at that age.
I recall how a friend of my wife once watched our daughter. We were both so incensed upon our return when we found our daughter glued to the television having watched cartoons like a zombie.
Don't be such tyrants, let her be a kid and do something different for a change.
> Yes, I am judging you, because you were incensed because she watched cartoons once.
What a strange reading. We, plural, weren't incensed due to her watching a "cartoon once" but because she had been dumped in front of a television for hours without adult supervision, without interaction with her siblings or friends, without books or going outside, or anything else.
Not everyone views dumping children alone in front of cartoons for hours on end to be a reward.