In my quest for the world’s secretly most neurotic mom award, I worry quietly about my daughter’s reading and writing. During her second year of preschool, I watched as the other children learned how to print their names. I tried working on this with my daughter, but she was absolutely uninterested.
According to her preschool teacher, that is totally normal. Ours was a play-based preschool, with no formal instruction in writing or reading. In our area a decade ago, children didn’t read or write nearly as early as they do now. Parenting has changed to focus more on early literacy, and early literacy means earlier and earlier.
Some children read early. My husband was one of those. Before age four, he was reading small picture books. I read at the normal time, some time in grade one. My dad read in grade three. All of us are strong and avid readers today.
I believe that barring severe learning disabilities, children will learn how to read and write and that it is the parent’s job to watch them and see where we can support them in this learning. Learning at home means that you know your students extremely well and can create a learning plan tailored to their needs.
I’m trying the beating around the bush method of reading and writing at the moment. We’re working on small motor skills, because my daughter is not particularly strong in that area. It’s easy to work on these through games like Operation, through beading, and through all sorts of fun activities that don’t look like pre-writing.
We’re also working on contextual reading. We park somewhere, and I get my daughter to read me the stall number. We walk to an elevator, and she presses the correct button. This is how adults read every day, and we’re doing just fine with it. Once she finds some security in her knowledge of the basic symbols of reading, then we’ll embark on some phonics – gently.
I’m trying to get better at reading in front of my daughter. Of course, there are always chores to be done, but modeling reading for pleasure is important too. We read together, too. Children want to do what adults do, and if adults read books, the children will want to read them as well.
How do you teach reading and writing?