LarrySanger.org

Essay on Baby Reading

I started teaching my little boy to read beginning at 22 months, and by age four, he was decoding text (reading, in that sense) quite fluently at the sixth grade level, or above.

I’ve discovered that there isn’t a lot written about the subject of baby reading.  So I have written a 45,000-word essay on the subject:

How and Why I Taught My Toddler to Read
PDF – DOC – HTML
(the PDF is best)

I’ve worked on this for two years, off and on.  It is formatted as a 140-page book, which I’m presenting to the public free, under a Creative Commons (CC-by-nc-nd) license.  Here is a video of my boy reading to me when he was two, then three, then four.  At age 3 years, 10 months, he read the First Amendment of the Constitution (in the video at 2:47):

How’d we do it? We used a variety of methods: I read many books to him while pointing to the words, I showed him over 1,000 home-made flashcards (careful: 122 MB zip file) arranged in phonetic groupings, we watched the Your Baby Can Read videos, we used these (150+) PowerPoint presentations I made for him (here’s an enormous 862MB zip file), and we did many other literacy-building activities.  All of this was done in a completely pressure-free way; I taught him to say “that’s enough” and immediately stopped when, if not before, he got tired of any activity. (UPDATE: these flashcards are in the process of being converted into a high-quality digital version at ReadingBear.org.)

I hope that by publicizing our case, we will raise awareness of the methods available that can, in fact, teach very small children to read with about as much ease as they can learn spoken language or sign language.

Working on early childhood educational content and issues is now my full-time job; among other things, I’m planning a new tool that will emulate the best aspects of Your Baby Can Read, but it will be free.  I’ve passed off leadership of WatchKnow.org to a new CEO, the very capable Dr. Joe Thomas.  Expect to see regular updates on this blog about my work, and I’ll be asking for your feedback about my various plans and ideas.

Please use this page to comment on both the essay and the video.

UPDATE: if you want a copy of the essay on your handheld device (and can’t figure out how to put the PDF on your device), you can buy it for $2.99 from the Amazon Store.  Someone asked for this, and I obliged!

UPDATE 2 (Oct. 3, 2011): my son is now five years old. He is now reading daily on his own, and has read himself a couple dozen chapter books, including The Story of the World, Vol. 1: The Ancient World (314 pgs.).

UPDATE 3 (Dec. 16, 2012): at six, my son switches between “serious” literature which he reads with a dictionary app, including Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, and The Secret Garden, and easier literature including Beverly Cleary books, the Hardy Boys, and Encyclopedia Brown. If his answers to regular comprehension questions are any indication, he’s understanding what he reads pretty well.

UPDATE 4 (Mar. 26, 2013): I’m delighted to report that my second son, following methods similar to those I used with my first, is now 2.5 years old and reading at a first grade level.

UPDATE 5 (Aug. 25, 2014): my second is following in his brother’s footsteps, reading a version of the Odyssey (he’s crazy about Greek mythology—go figure) at age 3.5:

UPDATE 6 (June 4, 2020): for over a year now, my older son (now 14) has been studying a humanities sequence of my design (including history, literature, art, philosophy, religion, etc.). The texts are classics in English translation, including the Bible, Gilgamesh, myths and texts from ancient Sumeria and Egypt, Hesiod, all of Homer, selections from Confucius, Lao Tsu, long selections from Herodotus and Thucydides, plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, Socratic dialogues of Plato, much of The Republic, much of Aristotle’s Poetics and Nicomachean Ethics, other philosophy, Plutarch’s life of Alexander, and just now he’s getting into Livy. The younger son (now 9) finished Harry Potter a second time and is now reading The Lord of the Rings. Like his brother, he has read plenty of age-appropriate classics like Treasure Island and Tom Sawyer. Both have managed to get by without reading a single Language Arts text (I wouldn’t do that to them).

by

Larry Sanger

“Internet Knowledge Organizer.” Currently President of the Knowledge Standards Foundation, started Wikipedia and various other educational and reference sites. Ph.D., Philosophy, Ohio State, 2000. [read more]

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132 responses to “Essay on Baby Reading”

  1. การสอนเด็กอ่านหนังสือโดยการใช้โฟนิคส์ ของ Flesch | Homeschool Thailand

    […] https://larrysanger.org/2010/12/baby-reading/ […]

    Reply
  2. Leni

    Hi Larry, thanks for sharing the video and your essay. It is quite an easy task to teach your kids to read if you yourself love to read. As the saying goes, you teach by example. If your kids see you read or even hold a book few minutes a day, then they would be interested in doing the same.

    we can also read to them or engage in a conversation with them. Consider reading time as our quality time with your kids.

    Reply
  3. Cheryl

    Thank you!

    I am excited to read your book. Especially the chapter about supporting early readers in school. Kindergarten went great for my early reader… first grade a disaster. One teacher (K) let him explore reading anything he wanted any level. The other (1st) limited him.

    I believe our schools have a long way to go with the question of what to do with children who can read at this level.

    Can’t wait to see your perspective.
    Cheryl

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      As you might know, we solve this problem by homeschooling. I threaten my 8-year-old with school if he doesn’t study enough!

      I can hardly advise you, but if I were you, I’d talk to the principal and, if you get no joy, look into other options such as a different school. If your son has been tested, I’d take the results to the principal and explain that your son deserves the best possible education, and that involves letting him read more advanced stuff. If your son hasn’t been tested, having test results in hand might help make your case.

      Reply
  4. Dora Chen

    Dear Larry,

    I am writing to say thank you and ask for your permission to translate your work.

    I am teaching English to children aged from 7 to 13 in China with the phonics method. I came accross readingbear when searching for phonics material. It is exactly what I want. Now we are using it on class and students are required to watch it at home. I also recommend my students to use the app of bitsboard.

    I then read your essay with great interest. The teaching of phonics is not taught in public primary and middle schools here. A 6th grader would come out from school with a vocabulary of around 1500-2000. A 9th grader has a vocabulary of around 3000-4000. Many are worse. They may spend years in school learning English but still don’t know how to pronounce a new word.

    We basically can not rely the public education system to learn English. In recent years, many educated parents tried to teach kids English at home. But they are lack of knowledge because they were taught in the old way. I believe your essay would be of great help to these eager parents and teachers. So would you please allow me to translate your essay and publish it on line? Thank you in advance!

    Your presentations on YouTube are also loved by my students.

    Thanks and Regards,

    Dora

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      As long as it’s free, you certainly have my permission. Thanks for your kind words!

      Reply
      1. Dora Chen

        Dear Larry,

        Thanks for the permission! The progress of translating your article is slow. I’ve only finished around 25 pages. I will send the translation to you when I completed it all.

        We had a problem opening the website of readingbear. I am not sure if it is the problem with the Chinese internet. It took too long for our students to open the presentation and sometimes it just doesn’t work. We all think the material is great. Do you have a file of the words/pictures, the audio and vedio for us to download? So that I can print out the word list with pictures for the kids. They can review it from time to time. Besides, not everyone has access to computer and internet here.

        Thanks again and happy new year!

        Regards,
        Dora

        Reply
  5. Alice

    I’m kind of despairing recently. I gave up my job to help our son in his formative years, and yet, I feel he is nowhere near this level. Things seemed to be going so well at first. He learned his phonics early – before he actually learned his letters; this was actually because we were doing phonics cards per the suggestion in your essay. He used to go to the mall with me since he could walk (around 14 months), and he would point to each letter in succession on the various signs and sound them out. When he was about 19 months, we were in the doctor’s office and he spelled out the word C A T, and then said “CAT”; I was so proud. But, at around that time I got morning sick with our second child, and for about 2 months I just lay in bed ill. And we didn’t eat so great. I’m not sure if that is what has undermined everything. He’s now 21.5 months and, nowhere close to reading. At around 21 months, he actually learned the letter names, and it took a lot of creative thinking to get him back to phonics; he still now gets the letter names and the letter sounds confused. He has absolutely no interest in sounding out more than one letter together. He does memorize some words in his favorite books, but I know he is not reading them, he is just committing them to memory. I just feel really sad. My IQ is only 135, and so is my husband’s; I was assessing our son per a new thing I found – “Ruf levels” – and he seems like he’s a level 4 there, which is depressing, because that would mean with all of our efforts, he’s still at 135 like us. I know that may sound silly but, I recently feel very depressed about all this, and am not sure how to get him to read. Or to do 35 piece puzzles, in which he has no interest in. He does know his shapes and colors, but, I still feel like he’s falling behind. Don’t know what else I can do at this point….

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Geez, don’t despair!

      It’s not a competition!

      Did you read when you were two? I didn’t. I just want my sons to have a better education than I did, a real, liberal arts education. I don’t require them to go to Harvard (fuck Harvard!). (No offense if you went to Harvard.)

      As to the particular issues your little ones are having, by golly, he’s only 21.5 months (do we really have to count the .5?).

      My IQ is about yours. Who cares. A person with an IQ of 100 or probably 80 could have a go at this. Learning to decode is not a matter of IQ; it’s another language modality like speaking. My boys really started picking up both reading and speaking at the same time, when they were two. They started at one, but didn’t make much headway until they were two.

      I didn’t think any scientist thought that IQ under age 5-8 could be stably and reliably measured. You’re just using some guy’s theory. Who cares. Also: who cares about IQ? I await the empirical proof that early education improves IQ. We can see kids reading, so that’s proven, as far as I’m concerned. But we haven’t seen their improved IQs, nor measured it. Here’s what we know, as far as I’m concerned: little kids can learn to read, and start amassing many facts, and have fun doing it. They can arrive at kindergarten age having internalized a lot of stuff (but frankly, a lot of stuff is forgotten as well). This will make them bored in regular school, so plan on unusual schooling of some sort. Similarly, early, fun (not forced, please not forced!!) exposure to music and various sports can make kids into, if not prodigies, then playing very well.

      What that means is only that your kids are getting more sophisticated educations by age 18–well, of course, that depends on later educational practices, and unless of course you let them slack off when they’re older and they lose any benefit of earlier knowledge.

      I teach my kids stuff early because I care about education and I want them to have an awesome well-rounded liberal arts education before they start specializing, like insects.

      Stop worrying! I’m sure you’re doing great! 🙂

      Reply
      1. Alice

        Thanks for your encouragement Larry. I did want to clarify that I don’t have the strength or emotional distance from my child in order to force him into anything; most days I can see this as a good thing, though, I have come to understand different parenting techniques. For example, in the country in which I was born, parents would do things that might appall parents here (subject them to strenuous gymnastics programs at the age of 2, humiliate them into engineering performance, etc.) – but, not so much because they were inhumane, or wanting to live through their children, but rather because it was the only way out of a poverty-stricken, Communist country that allowed no other means of escaping the country. I know from the outside it sound horrendous, but, the living conditions were such that, routinely my parents had to go without food in order to feed us, and by the time they got to the states, they had already lost several teeth from malnutrition; if they were ever demanding, it’s because they know what it is to be poor.

        Once we got here, they were incredibly motivated, and had high hopes for us. I guess this is why they would always say things like “no matter how well you do at math and science here, there is a child in India or Russia working around the clock to beat you and take your job when you grow up.” They would also say things like “math and science are the only thing that matter.” They would get infuriated when we did arts or crafts at school, and I distinctly remember my Mom coming in and snapping my colored pencils in half, telling me to stop wasting my life, and calling my drawings “hideous creations.” She followed this up with some statistics about successful artists, and asked me if I wanted to starve growing up. To a large degree, I still hear this dialogue in my head as an adult.

        My sister did go to Harvard; she did read by 3, in two languages. I know from her how kind and wonderful the student body is at Harvard – and the institution as a whole. According to her the pervasive attitude there is “we’ve made it, so we don’t have to compete against each other at this stage.” I was not so lucky. My parents never pushed me that hard; I excelled in math, and did well in school, but I started becoming emotionally unstable in high school; this was mostly from some math competitions hosted by the state college in which students from the whole state would come and prove their prowess in various math and science fields Tests very similar (in my opinion), to IQ tests were administered – and only the top 3 scorers in any category would get awards. There would then be an extensive awards ceremony and speech by the Dean of the college about how valuable these individuals were to society, and what great students they would someday make there. Nothing much was said to the hundreds of rest of us; we were there to clap for the “best and the brightest.” Coincidentally, the winners happened to all be Asian, confirming my worst suspicions – I had not studied enough as a child, and now, I was always to be second rate.

        I tried to shake things off, but, never really managed to. I did well on standardized test, and AP tests, but, became very socially anxious; I felt like others were judging me based on my academic capacity, and I didn’t want to be around others. When I got to college, unfortunately I never visited the college I was to attend; I just went by the rankings, as my parents expected me to. I was originally accepted into Russian Literature Studies but my parents deemed there would be no jobs in this field, and recommended I switch to biomedical engineering “so you have a back up in case medical school doesn’t pan out.” They let me transfer because of my scores. However, college went even worse than high school. Gone was the frame work of parent-like teachers, and the encouragement of my sister and friends. And there was something really odd about this college too; all the students in the engineering program (it seemed to me), were keen at winning at the expense of others. There was no such thing as compassion, or kindness, or even concern for one’s fellow classmates. Group exercises only served to establish which student was more dominant and pushy than the others. I stopped going to class determined to learn things on my own, but that didn’t go so well. I remember there was one very kind physics professor who told me “if you’re trying to learn by reading every chapter, and deriving every formula, you’re never going to pass my tests; there isn’t enough time to do that – going to class teaches you what to skip.” My fluids professor actually got so angry at me for coming in about some derivation that he took the book out of my hands, and threw it across the room and said “nothing I wrote in that book is as important as coming to class.” He also asked if I lived my life in a vacuum -because I had no peers to ask for help from. He then asked the next class period if anyone were willing to work in groups, and I think even he was surprised that next to no one raised their hands. I even asked a few students outside of class and they just looked at me like I was incredibly weak and said “I prefer to work alone.” One went as far as to lie to me about the problem set assigned, and when confronted about it, said it wasn’t his problem that I didn’t show up to class.

        Obviously, I was at fault in my inability to perform. However, these experiences have reinforced the concept in my mind that life is a competition, and, if I don’t somehow prepare my child to be better than these people alone, they may emotionally humiliate him and make him feel inferior, and what will I be doing, I will be standing and watching the rape of his soul happen, and maybe I will wish I had been a more involved parents somehow. It is this fear above all that has motivated me to quit my job, and to try to give him, gently, every advantage. I don’t know what it is like to have a love of learning. But I know I can make learning gentle.

        Transferring from that school was very helpful in my recovery. Suddenly the pace of material was reduced by 1/3. I was able to study things slowly. I had available professors. They were kind, available, like parents. I made it a point to be the antithesis of the arrogant competitiveness I witnessed earlier in my later scholastic experiences. My greatest joys have been helping my husband through school, and helping classmates struggling with material it took me hours to independently learn. Without a knife to my throat, humiliation, and the threat of loss, I am able to function optimally, and be someone who contributes to the world. If there is anything I want for my son, it’s either to remove those things from his life, or build up his skills to the point that no one can take him down if he is in such an environment.

        I am only pitifully equipped to do so. But I’m highly motivated. This is why the reading is important to me. I don’t to feel like there’s any effort we failed to make at the right time to give him every advantage. Because I don’t want him to experience pain.

        So, I just wanted to clarify that.

        Reply
        1. Larry Sanger

          Fascinating story! Not that it’s any of my business, but I hope you don’t pressure your children the way you were pressured. There’s a happy medium, and in any event, IMO pressure and very little kids don’t mix.

          Also, if you didn’t want your child to experience pain, you shouldn’t have had a child. 😉 Everyone experiences pain…

          Anyway, I appreciate it!

  6. ali raza

    impressive story thanks for sharing your info

    Reply
  7. Sf mom

    Larry,
    I just wanted to say a million times thank you for writing this article and for sharing your experience with the world.

    My boy is 8mo. He was about 6months when I happened upon your article by complete accident on amazon. The thought of doing early learning activites had never occurred to me in the slightest, yet your article immediately drew me in. I read it, reread sections, then took notes! Lol.

    We’ve started ybcr and brillkids little math. I’m fully confident my little guy will learn to read, and with little math and other help such as marshmallow math, I’m confident we can nurture a love and curiosity for math as well.

    Its hard to go against the grain though, and every so often I get worried about whether this is the right thing for my boy. Whenever these doubts rise I think back to the thorough “objection” section of your paper. I take a deep breath, and recall your very rational arguments. Unfortunately there is so much misinformation out there (and so very ironically Wikipedia really bashes Doman).

    Hopefully this great opportunity catches on. Many little readers will create a demand for a reform in education to meet the new needs. Unfortunately, San Francisco doesn’t seem to be at the forefront. I’m part of a very active mothers group with over 5k members. Searching forum post history only turned up ONE THREAD about teaching a toddler to read and trust, I did many searches with many keywords. This… In a city that has waitlists for $25 music and swim classes for 3mo. Where the panic to get into the “right” preschool/public school/private school consumes endless discussions. Where the preschools can cost 30k easily… This mothers group has never had a single discussion about Doman, or ybcr, never has the word abacus ever been mentioned.

    So thank you Larry so much for the enlightenment. Looking forward to sharing this special gift with my son and using Reading Bear when he learns his letters!

    Perhaps an ask as well… Any chance you did anything on the math front?

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Thanks for your kind words. I’m glad to be of help.

      I never really studied early math methods, for reasons I don’t have time to get into right now. But we did use math flashcards, and with younger brother we used various math apps and he seems to be farther along than H. was at this age, at least in math. But anyway H. is just a couple years ahead in math; he’s no great prodigy.

      Reply
  8. Dora Chen

    Dear Larry,

    Happy New Year!

    First a report on my translation. Sorry the progress is slow. I’ve only finished around 25 pages.I’ll send you a copy once I completed the translation of whole essay.

    Second I would like to seek your advice on the possibility of publishing the material on reading bear as a phonics book in China. The idea came up to me through my teaching with the website. The teaching of phonics is a new thing to most of Chinese teachers and parents. It just gained the educators’ attention in the last few years. While several phonics reader series were imported and printed out in China,there is a still lack of proper teaching material in the education market. The reading bear is designed for little kids. I observed that it is useful to both the primary students and junior high students. A headmaster of junior high school here, who is also an English teacher, thinks it is not easy work for average junior high students to learn with Readingbear after I introduced the website to him. After 6 years of learning English at school, a junior high school graduate can master a vocabulary of around 2000 at best. You may wonder what happens with the 6-year education. But it is the reality of English teaching with most of the schools except those in big cities like Shanghai or Beijing.

    In a word, I believe reading bear is a useful tool for students here. But not every student has access to computer and internet. Books are still a great way to spread information. Actually my students complained to me that they have problem opening the reading bear website at home. It seems take forever for it to download the presentation. Students lose patience though they like the material. It might be due to problem with internet here. This is why I want to print out the material for my students. It would be better if we can make it a book for all students in the country.

    My idea is to compile the translation of your essay and the word lists into one book. Your essay would provide a guide for teaching and using the phonics material to teachers and parents. The book will be accompanied with audio for the words and sentences, or even the videos. Some notes or translation of the certain words will be needed because students can’t make a correct guess at the meaning of all the pictures.

    Looking forward to your reply.
    Thanks and Regards,
    Dora

    Reply
  9. Iwasadomankid

    My parents used Doman’s Teach Your Baby to Read book with me when I was a baby (33.5 years ago!). I grew up loving reading and literature and I believe that learning to read early gave me a great head start and more importantly it gave me a sense of independence and self-worth. I wanted to give those gifts to my children, but didn’t know where to start. So I used a mix of Doman and “Your Baby Can Read” with my first child (now 7-yrs-old) who enjoyed the videos but didn’t seem interested in the flashcards. I took a break, and then kind of gave up, thinking maybe some kids really take to it, some don’t, and he would read when he was ready. In the mean time we read to him all the time. My mother reminded me that she tried to teach my 3 other siblings the same way she taught me but none of them were as interested in it. So I didn’t even try with my 2nd child. They both are learning to read the same traditional way, phonetically, starting at age 4-5.
    My third child learned her letter names and sounds by 18 months, mainly from the Endless Alphabet app by Originator, Inc. Since she knows her sounds and is always pretending to read me all her books she has memorized, I thought she’d love it and I’d give early reading another try. I wondered if I could find some phonetic ideas to use. I found you! I’m looking forward to having some fun with it again. Most of all the thing she’ll get out of it is spending more quality time with the ones who love her. Thanks for spreading the love! Cheers.

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Thanks for sharing and I appreciate your story. Love to hear more about how the Doman training helped you. I’m also glad my stuff has been helpful to you. Cheers!

      Reply
  10. Susan Andrews

    Don’t forget to introduce some physical exercise to go along with their oh so impressive reading program, an infinity important part of raising a healthy child.

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Oh yes, we shove them outside daily, and we also have an indoor gym they play on.

      Reply
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