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.
06/17/08
Dr. Titzer or Staff:
I am reading specialist who works with struggling readers in elementary school. Has it been shown that Dr. Titzer’s methods work successfully with school age children? Can these methods be adapted for older kids? — Mrs. Doris Paige
I have a 4 year old son with autism. I know he understands much of the spoken word but has trouble communicating himself. He speaks about 15-20 words but infrequently. He also has trouble with imitation and needs much practice. Do you think this system will benefit him?
Dear Doris,
Thank you very much for your question. I think you have an extremely important and challenging position that can be a life-changing experience for the children.
I hope you try this multi-sensory approach with your students. This approach is great for all types of learners whether they are visual, auditory, or kinesthetic.
Our program has worked with school-age children (up to age 9 that I am aware of), but some of the older children only learn the individual words instead of recognizing the patterns. For older children it works better when you supplement the program with more phonics since it is harder for them to discover the patterns of language of language than it is for toddlers.
I want to emphasize that the babies and toddlers are able to discover the patterns of the written language (or phonics) on their own without specifically being taught just as they figure out the patterns of the spoken language (or grammar) without being taught.
Good luck to you and your students.
Dr. Bob Titzer
Dear Jennifer,
Thank you for your question. I am very sorry for my delay in answering.
We have many babies, toddlers, and preschoolers who have autism who have learned to read with this multi-sensory approach. I have had moms give me hugs and cry while describing that when their children learned to read early and that opened the door for them to learn language.
Since we would ask your child to say the word, and your child would see the word, hear the word, and do a physical action related to the word as well as see and hear what the words mean, it should help your child have more elaborate brain connections related to the words. Since he still has thousands of new synapses forming every second, he would likely improve his language abilities by using our DVDs instead of watching other TV shows or DVDs.
Once he has learned to read, you can help him group words together by printing them. Many children with autism who know how to read make great advances with the spoken language as well.
If you provide your personal e-mail address, I could put you in contact with some parents who used our system who have children with autism. They may be able to provide you with a wealth of information to assist you.
Dr. Bob Titzer
I have a 14-yr-old son with cerebral palsy, who is non-verbal, but has all consonant and vowel sounds. He is cognitively “with you” but all muscles are impaired, and because of this, there has been very little academic input into his school curriculum. He is visually impaired but can see close range. I became very excited when I learned about this as I am always looking for ways to help him. Have you had anyone with success in teaching special-needs kids with your program? Thank you, so much,
Connie Phillips
I would like to teach my 2 year old little boy a second language. We just started your program, should I wait until he is reading before I introduce a second language- I am concerned that he will get confused with the 2 different languages.
Thank you very much for your program.
I homeschool our 5 oldest children and taught them all to read using a combination of phonics and whole language approaches. Our 6th child, who is two years old, is extremely bright and I was thinking of teaching him to read but I am wondering if, after using this program, he will be a fluent enough reader by the time he is school age or if I will need to further instruct him using a phonics program as well.
Dear Dr. Titzer,
I am the father of a 3-month old baby girl and live in Hong Kong where Chinese is the mother tongue and English is the secondary language.
After watching the amazing videos of Aleka and reading your website emphasizing the importance of learning young, I bought a set of the Your baby can read materials in order to provide Cadence (my lovely daughter)an opportunity to start learning the secondary language earlier. So far, Cadence feels exciting and happy in watching the videos.
In using the materials, I have a few questions and would like to seek your advice:
1. Is it no good for a young child like Cadence to watch the DVD? I’ve heard that TV may do some harms on young baby’s eyes.
2. Since my mother tongue is Chinese (and I am planning to DIY some Chinese word cards to teach Cadence Chinese reading), I am afraid of teaching Cadence both English and Chinese at such a young age may make her confuse. Did Aleka also learn languages other than English? Can you share your experience with me to ease my concern?
3. I know the schedule of viewing the DVDs, but after watching the Review DVD, should I re-run the course by playing the Starter DVD again, or simply pick the DVDs randomly?
Thanks for your time and looking forward to your reply.
B. regards,
Sam
Dear Dr. Titzer,
My daughter is 3 and a half years old .she seems clever but she is a little behind in speaking she uses the pronouns correctly she says sentences of 3 words .there are some sounds in her speech are not very clear.children in her age speak better than her .
The mother tongue language is Arabic ..I don’t know if it is ok teaching her reading a second language by using your program espcially that she is not speaking Arabic ver well.And is it OK teaching her to read a second language before teaching her to read Arabic ,I am afraid that this will affect her learning to read Arabic when she goes to school …since your program is not available in Arabic ..
my regards,
Wafaa
Dear Dr. Titzer,
My daughter is now 22-month old and would it be too late to start with this program?
Thanks
Tina
We have a 16 month old and are interested in starting this program. Our concern is that, although we are fully bilingual, we are constantly talking in Spanish to her (since spanish is our first language). But she also watches TV in English and interacts with our friends who mainly speak English. How would this affect her use of this program?
Dear Dr. Titzer,
I started my son on the program at exactly 3 months. He’s 9 months old today and I had always thought I would see huge improvements on what he could do by now, but I’m not. He LOVES watching the DVD’s, we read the flip books, and we look at the pull-out cards. I’ve tried using the 82 cards with him to see if he can distinguish between 2 words now or not. My husband and I notice that he looks at the word we are saying, but more times than not, he will grab for the other card that we did not say.
I have a MS in Reading and a BS in Elementary Education and Early Childhood so I know that all of this will take time, but I watch the infomercials on Your Baby Can Read and I read your blogs and everything sounds like we should see amazing results by now. My son is on Volume 3 and according to your viewing guidelines, we will be starting the Review DVD on March 12th. Am I doing something wrong? I’m also a stay at home mom so I have lots of time to read to him from other books and use the materials from your program. I know you are very busy, but if you get a chance to reply, I would greatly appreciate it. My son is on Volume 3 and according to your viewing guidelines, we will be starting the Review DVD on March 12th.
Dr. Titzer,
I have two questions for you about “Your Baby Can Read.” First, I would like to know if there was any particular methodology you used to select the words you chose in the very first CD labeled “starter video?” Basically, I would like to know why you chose the words you selected to be presented first to infants/children.
Second, I would like to know if you are familiar with the Dibels assessment, and if Keeling or Aleka were given Dibels assessments in K through 5th grade. Have you done any studies correlating the use of your products with improved or increased Dibels scores?
Many Thanks
My father bought my boys this program about a week before my oldest son’s 3rd birthday. In the first two weeks he could already read most of the words from the first video. It has since been four weeks and we started the second video a couple of days ago. He can already read all of the words from the first video and has trouble with only a couple of the words from the second video. Because he is learning at such a fast rate should I still spend 2 months on the second video even though he can already read the words? And with that being said what about my other children… How do I balance keeping up with my three year old and making sure the other two (a 20 month old and a 2 month old) get enough of the videos?