Learning to Read for Kids

Learning to Reading for Babies

Parents today are becoming increasingly concerned for the education of their children, and one of the main concerns for many parents is learning reading for kids. There is no shortage of programs that are targeted towards parents who are interested in teaching their kids to read at a young age.

I'm sure you have seen babies and very young children reading on TV commercials or on YouTube. Have you ever wondered whether these babies and young children are really "reading", or simply "reading from memorization"? There's a world of difference between real reading, and memorizing. It's easy to distinguish a child who can really read and a child who has only memorized certain words pretending to read. Show both child something they've never seen before, and you'll easily be able to tell who can really sound out and read the text, and who can't.

But on TV and videos posted on the web, it's not so easy to tell whether a child really knows how to read. However, if you ever see videos where the young child is clearly sounding out the phonemes of the words and then synthesizes the phonemes to form the word, then you know that child knows how to really read. Don't believe me, click here to watch a video of a 2 year 11 months old reading. You'll see in that video that the young child clearly sounds out the phonemes, and then blends to pronounce the complete word.

What would you rather teach your child - how to memorize a few dozen words, or how to effectively decode written English to be able to read anything and everything?

This is not to say that whole language based methods are useless. While they aren't very effective at teaching reading, some memorizing is required when it comes to sight words. Most words can be sounded out following certain rules; however, there are words that a person simply knows by just looking at the word, and there's no way to really "sound out" the word. These are known as sight words - words that you know simply by looking at them.

You may wonder why you need to take the time to teach your kids reading when they can learn to read in school. Sure, most children learn to read in school; however, a surprising large number of kids struggle with reading in school. In fact 38% of grade 4 students in the USA cannot achieve basic reading proficiency. Poor reading skills leads to low self-confidence, and poor academic performance in other subjects.

Children who struggle with reading have a very difficult time catching up. It is estimated that over 14% of all adults in US and Canada are functionally illiterate, where these adults are unable to perform even the simplest literacy tasks each day.

If you are a concerned parent, investing just a few minutes each day of your time will help your child achieve superb reading skills. Don't blindly leave your child's literacy skills up to the education system. Your time investment is minimal compared to the lifetime of benefits your child gains by learning to read at an early age.

The process of teaching your child to read is also an extremely rewarding experience for you as a parent, and also for your child. It will help strengthen your bond, and it will instill deep respect within you for the amazing learning capabilities of young children. I am saying this from experience, after having taught my own 2 and 3 year old kids to read successfully. You will give your child a huge start in life, and open up many new opportunities for your child to interact and understand the world around them.

When children learn to read at a young age, they do so in a very effective manner. During this period of their development, young children possess superior language learning capabilities.

Start teaching your child to read today.

Click here for one of the best resources that will show you how to easily
teach your child to read.