"I'll just be giving my child a head start, right?"
"The earlier the better."
"I saw it on TV!"
PARENTS ARE WELL-MEANING BUT MAY BE MISINFORMED
These are common comments from well-meaning parents. The problem is that these ideas have no scientific foundation. Just because someone says "there's research", don't believe it. What I alway recommend to educators is to look for three INDEPENDENT studies that confirm the same findings before you believe any of it. The science (and there is a lot of it) tells us a much different story, one of complex connections being built in brains years before a child is ready to learn to "decode" (see the symbols and understand the sounds related to them, blending into words they recognize from their oral vocabulary).
The truth is that most baby's brains at birth have nearly the same number of brain cells, give or take a small number according to genetics (about 100 billion!). Years ago, Piaget confirmed that young children first learn through the concrete, concrete experiences with senses and motion. As they grow, they move into increasingly more abstract thinking (the first hint is when the baby realizes you are still behind the blanket and that you haven't gone away just because he/she cannot see you). That is a good framework from which to think about children learning to read. Understanding a variety of symbols (graphemes) and cognitively recognizing and thinking about the sounds they represent is too abstract for most children until the ages of 4-6. And that doesn't mean that if your child isn't ready to read at 4, you should "make him". Earlier IS NOT always better. For more information about young children's brain growth at ages zero to three, visit Zero to Three's website.
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