Preschool Reading Stress
Never before has our clinic had such a rash of young mothers calling our office worried that their beautiful children are behind in their reading and spelling. These are the mothers of preschool aged children.
With the constant pressure on our schools to ever increase the educational outcomes a situation is now occurring where young children are expected to read, do math and other academic feats ever younger.
We must never forget there are laws of nature, laws of physics and math ever present in our beautiful world. Some of these are unable to be changed by us mere mortals.
Our developing child at about 12 months of age is learning to walk and talk. It would be an absolute nonsense to think that we could teach these infants to read and spell.
At 2 years old, most children are up on their feet, communicating with their family and are finding their place in their family.
At 3 years of age, their spoken and hearing language is now to the point that they are able to have a nice conversation with just about anybody. Of course it is also when they start working out the relative merits of forcing their will on others. The tantrum emerges.
At 4 years of age, our little wonders love dressing up and their imagination is vivid. They start to see and recognize shapes, letters numbers, arrows and all sorts of symbols.
At 5 years of age, it is common to see many of our young children having good success at reading and being able to begin understanding basic math with things like counting.
At this point it is necessary to stop.
Every parent reading along with me so far will know pretty accurately when these activities mentioned first appeared. They also know quite well that the child across the street may have begun a particular activity a month or two earlier or later. They also probably know that learning any activity is considered normal if it develops in a time span known as a window.
Our preschool child is now caught up in a scenario not of their making but one that is a product of the Australian Government and the education system.
If a measure of the policy can be made by the comments we receive and the calls we are getting for help, then it seems the policy makers may have to rethink their position.
Until things change, here are a few suggestions for you to build a buffer for your child.
1)Sight words. These seem to never end and provide enormous stress for our little children. They become overwhelmed by them and I find they are a very clumsy way of teaching someone to read. They do have their place, but not in the very early years. They should have a couple of sight words and these are their name, their class teachers name, their class number and perhaps their school name.
2)Home readers. I suggest that you read the book to your little child, but pick out something that they can read. It might just be the letter T. So when you open and read the next page, they just find all the letter ‘T’ while you read. It could be a ‘sight’ word like ‘and’. So as you read the pages, they are busily hunting for all the ‘and’ words. It won’t take very ling before they can ‘finish off the sentence’ as you are reading.
3)Spelling. Be sure to always write out the word many times before moving on and speak out loud whilst doing so. Learning one new word is great. Learning twenty is also great, but learning none and destroying a childs confidence in the process must be avoided.
4)Look for success and champion to your childs teacher. If you find that your child can manage 3 new words but 10 words upsets them, let the teacher know.
We have a wonderful education system in this country, but at times, we as parents need to be the buffer between it and our child. Always advocate your childs needs, love them and assist them. Look for areas of strength and also their difficulties.
Be comfortable in the knowledge that if they are struggling, then there is probably someone out there who does have the answer and will be able to help.
Written by Philip Gruhl www.tyquingroupspeechpathology www.reading-tutor.com.au ph 07 33998028