Teaching a Two Year Old To Read with Alphabet Flashcards

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2 points·nmfisher··7 comments

I decided to start actively teaching my son to read from his second birthday, and I wanted to share my thinking and his progress along the way.

That was around when I was taught to read, and I think it was a significant advantage for school, career, and life. (in particular, I got into the habit of looking up stuff on my own before entering the educational system)

I recently read that Alan Kay was reading "fluently" (his words) by age three, and he attributes much of his success to this.

I share the same belief, but the other complicating factor is that my wife wants my son to learn Chinese. I wonder if the additional cognitive slog will offset any gains he makes with English. I guess that's a topic for another day, and I'll see how things play out over the next six months.

My rough guess (I did not become polyglot until much later, and my second language also had latin script) is that as long as he's having fun he'll be fine.

子不學非所宜。幼不學老何為。

(Some friends of mine tried to make diglossia easier by having each language always associated with the same parent. So even if they were speaking to each other, if in front of their son, each would converse in their L1)

One parent/one language makes a lot of sense. My wife has already started in that direction, I think we should probably try and commit to it more diligently.

Just a fyi: your website is not readable on mobile. (At least not on my firefox/android) The text clips to the left. Desktop mode works though.

Thanks - I'm aware of that, unfortunately between my regular work and the childcare, I haven't had time to fix it. I'm basically off sick today, so I'll try and fix it up.

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