Myth 2: That’s not really reading

Seeing isn’t always believing. Some people are so sure that babies can’t read that their response to a baby reading is: “That’s not reading!”

How so? Well, teaching your preverbal baby to read means that you will not be teaching phonics – the sounds of individual letters – but rather whole words. And this means that your baby will only learn to recognize whole words. In other words, your preverbal baby will only be able to read words that she has seen before.

At first, this may seem a compelling reason for dismissing a baby’s reading ability. But have you ever wondered how we all learned to read? The truth is that almost everyone learns to read their first words by sight, or as whole words. The first words that a child reads are invariably words that he already knows – whether he is two, four or six years old. Of course, if you are teaching your child a character-based language such as Chinese, then recognizing whole words at sight is the only type of reading there is.

Learning to read is a gradual process. In the case of alphabet-based languages, the learner progresses from sight-reading to phonetic reading (being able to sound out the individual letters in a word), to the final stage – phonemic reading (being able to understand that letters can be pronounced differently depending on their context).

Children who learn to read whole words as babies often become phonetic readers before their third birthday – around two years earlier than average. As a result, they are invariably reading phonemically – at several grade levels above their age – before starting first grade.

There is controversy surrounding whether or not children should be taught to read whole words at all – to learn more, go to Whole Language Vs Phonics. While BrillBaby recommends teaching whole words to babies, it is also vital that children get to grips with phonics from an early age.

Phonics can be taught as soon as your child is able to vocalize letter sounds (roughly between age 18 months and two years). Some children who are taught whole words as babies are able to intuit the rules of phonics, and so do not require teaching. This is the similar to the way in which children learning their mother tongue intuit the rules of grammar without being taught.

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On to myth number 3…