Sharing Experience on Teaching Babies to Read

Teaching Felicity Reading

(Elaine is the mother of Felicity, who is featured here reading many words at the age of 12 months. Felicity is 14 months old at the time of this article’s writing.)

I would like to make to special note about our experience in teaching her to read, as we are often asked this question. When we first started flashcards with her at the age of 4 months, she was pretty focussed. After a while though, her attention span got shorter and shorter, especially as she started to become more and more mobile. Also, we could not be sure how much of the words she actually absorbed, as the method did not really teach her the meaning of the words. We kept at it though, but because we did not want to ‘force’ her to read when she was clearly disinterested, our sessions would get shorter and shorter each time.

When she was 9 months old, we discovered Dr. Titzer’s method, and was amazed at what his daughter Aleka could do at the age of 9 months. We started showing her the DVDs as well as the books. She absolutely loved them, especially the DVDs. In an effort to personalize the experience more, we also made our own books using photos we took ourselves with our own digital camera and printed out at a nearby photo shop. We made about 10 or more books, in English and Chinese, and of different word categories like animals, action words, etc. When we started showing her the books, she could not get enough of them! After finishing with one book, she would fuss to be shown the next one, until we had to encourage her to take a break after about 5 books in a row.

We are very pleased with the results we have achieved. She started recognizing words as early as about 2 weeks after that. Although the video we shot that shows her reading words was made after her first birthday, she could already read most of the words there when she was 11 months old. However, despite the fact that it was Dr. Titzer’s method that allowed Felicity to be able to more easily show us she recognized words, we still believe that Glenn Doman’s flashcards also played a very important role in laying the foundations by exposing her to a very large number of words.

One thing to note though, even though Felicity can read many words now, she has not learned phonics – in other words, she does not yet have the skill to pronounce a word that she’s never seen before by knowing the phonic system and rules. Her skill now is more akin to someone being able to read Chinese characters, where she either recognizes the character (and can pronounce it and/or know the meaning of it) or she doesn’t at all. Having said that, we do believe that her brain is currently already learning and putting together the phonic rules by itself, and when she eventually is taught phonics, it would be much easier for her.

Most importantly, Felicity has developed a great love for reading! She would actually prefer books over her toys! Oftentime, she would grab a book and bring it over to me or her Daddy for us to read it to her, and at other times, she would just ‘play’ with the books herself, sometimes making quite a racket with her babbling! To keep her reading materials fresh and not spend a bomb on buying books, we now go to the local library and borrow children books for her to read. The only thing she doesn’t enjoy as much is being tested, like when we ask her to 'perform' for others, or for our videos!

To round off, I think that one of the most important things to remember is never to force your baby into things such as reading. Always make sure that her experience with such things is a positive and joyful one, and to have the discipline to stop ‘feeding’ her books or whatever when she shows that she is no longer interested. Is she a happy baby? We certainly believe so! Although she will occasionally have her fussing and tantrum-throwing when she cannot get what she wants, she is generally a fun-loving, energetic, and bubbly girl who never ceases to put us (as well as herself!) into fits of laughter!

Felicity's mother's experience

Why teach babies to read so early?

“Poor kid! Just let them have fun!” Some people say that they refuse to 'torture' their children and force them to read at such a young age, especially since this is the only time a child can really play and have fun before being subjected to the rigors of schooling.

Myths of early learning

Today, the teaching of babies by their parents is typically limited to things such as how to say simple words like 'Mommy' and 'Daddy,' identifying body parts, and how to play simple games. In general, an infant is mostly left alone to do whatever he seems to enjoy doing, without much active involvement from the parents to actually teach him anything much beyond that.