1. What’s the rush with teaching babies to read?

This is not rushing anything. It is learning language during the most natural time, which is infancy. Instead of thinking about reading as a difficult skill to learn in school, we should think of it as understanding written language. Every child has only one natural window of opportunity for learning language. This window for begins by birth and starts closing by four years of age. During this natural time it is easier for the child to learn at more advanced levels, and with little effort. This is true for talking and understanding language, plus learning second languages, sign language and written language.

In the monumental research work that began in the 1980s by Hart and Risley, which took 24,000 work-hours to complete, they discovered it is very important for parents to talk to their babies. This creates a bonding opportunity and has a positive impact on their babies’ language capabilities and future quality of life. While many other studies in the 1960s and 1970s also showed the importance of talking to babies, Hart and Risley’s work eventually made an impact on how parents interact with their babies.

Here are some keys points discovered by Hart and Risley as a result of researching parents and children over a number of years:

1. Some parents said an average of more than 3,000 words per hour to their babies while others spoke as little as 200.

2. Toddlers’ talkativeness stopped growing once it reached the parents’ level of talkativeness.

3. By the age of three, children in the most talkative families had spoken more than 12 million words while children in the least talkative families said fewer than 4 million words.

4. Children in talkative families have language advantages throughout their lives, along with much greater vocabularies and a better understanding of language.

5. The children who were behind at age three did not catch up in any language-related area throughout their lives.

6. It was not the parents’ race, IQ, or socio-economic class that caused these language differences. It was the amount of talking that the parents did with their babies.

This same type of window of opportunity for learning language exists with foreign languages, sign language, and written language. More than a decade ago, scientists learned that the brain actually develops more efficiently when a child learns the second language in the first few years of life compared to after age four. Babies can also learn functional sign words, or even sign language when someone teaches them, without much effort. Now, scientists are discovering that babies can also learn to read as easily and naturally as they learn to talk when they are allowed to see the language that they hear.

We currently wait until a child’s brain is about 90% developed before we begin teaching written language, which helps explain why so many children struggle to read. Children who don’t read well generally do not enjoy reading. It is not natural to withhold language from babies and it is certainly not in the child’s best interest. The most natural time to learn language is during the infant and toddler years. This is when they learn all other aspects of language without any intentional effort. This means that when very young babies are allowed to see the language they could develop more efficient pathways for written language just like they do for the spoken language or second languages.

2. Why should they start at 6 months?

The best time to begin is when the baby develops visual tracking or the ability to follow moving objects with the eyes. This is generally by three months of age.

There are numerous reasons why parents should start early:

• The most natural time to learn any aspect of language is during infancy.
• The window of opportunity for learning language begins to close by age four which means it requires more effort to learn language skills after this time.
• It is fun to read.
• This can be a great bonding experience for babies and parents.
• It is easier to learn language skills at a high level in the first few years of life.
• The neural pathways for written language can develop to be more efficient when learned earlier in childhood compared to later in childhood.
• The earlier a child is taught to read the better the child reads, even when IQ and socio-economic status are controlled.
• The earlier the child is taught to read the more likely the child actually enjoys reading.