How To Teach Your Baby To Read (Multi-sensory)

Multi-Sensory Learning

This method was pioneered by Dr. Robert Titzer, a highly-recognized infant researcher and University professor. His video of his daughter Aleka displaying the ability to comprehend word after word at the tender age of nine months continues to amaze people.

This method is based on the principle that by stimulating as many of the child’s senses as possible as he is being taught to read, the easier it becomes for the child to remember the words. For example, when teaching your child the word “flower,” the best would be to let him see, smell, and touch the flower as he hears the word “flower.” For words such as “clap” (action word) and “nose” (body part), the child is also encouraged to do the action (such as clapping, or pointing to her nose) in addition to seeing someone else performing the word as it is both shown and read aloud to her.

The advantage of this approach is that the variety of stimuli makes it more interesting for the child, and is therefore more effective in teaching different types of children who could be visual, auditory, and/or kinesthetic (movement) learners. This method also places much more emphasis on understanding the meaning behind the words, and therefore enables us to assess whether a child has learned a word even before she learns how to talk when she is able to react appropriately to the word (through gesturing the meaning of the word, for example).

The disadvantage is that more effort is needed to teach a child since more materials (such as pictures) are required. Moreover, fewer words are taught, which means that the child has less exposure to words from which she can derive patterns and rules which would help her learn the phonics system.

Dr. Titzer has tried to make our lives easier in this respect by providing ready-made DVDs and books based on his method of learning. These excellent and highly-recommended DVDs provide the child with words coupled with videos relevant to the words, and intermix it with song and other interactive events. More information can be obtained from www.infantlearning.com.

Our Recommendation

We believe both the Flashcard system and the Multi-Sensory methods are excellent, and both have a very strong proven record of achieving great results. We also believe that there is no real reason you should not to do both, provided that the materials can be delivered to your child in a joyous manner, and that you remain vigilant of your child’s moods so that you are never ‘forcing’ her to learn when she is clearly disinclined.

We strongly recommend purchasing flashcards and CD-Roms from Gentle Revolution Press, as well as the DVDs and books from Infant Learning. They are well worth the money.

Felicity's mother's experience

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.

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.