The “Hurried Child”
I have strong reservations about trying to teach a child to read at too early an age.
While one school of thought claims that much is to be gained by developing a child’s language abilities between birth and age 6, I and suspicious about the obsession some parents have with fostering an achievement syndrome in very young children. Too often, this is accomplished at the expense of a child’s social and emotional skills.
One mother told me how vital it was to teach her child to read before first grade so that the youngster could get in a top reading group. If children aren’t in the top reading group, she said, they won’t get on the fast track or get into the right colleges.
The truth of the matter is that the country with the highest literacy rate and the greatest general affluence happens to be Denmark, which does not begin teaching reading until age 7. So why the hurry?
I recommend that every parent read David Elkind’s book, “The hurried child.” The professional parent the career parent is too often bringing his or her own career anxieties into the child rearing process. They’re in a big hurry to make their kids old before their time.
In contrast, several major studies on early fluent readers those who learn to read before they ever set foot in the classroom show that the overwhelming majority of these children were never taught how to read. They just picked it up by osmosis by being exposed to books and reading.