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Aishwarya Raji, a medical doctor and mom from India who read some of my Psychology Today posts on baby/toddler reading, reached out to me. Her story highlights four science-based lessons for teaching babies/toddlers to read.
Lesson #1: It’s an amazing journey!
I’m a mom from India. My daughter Mahithasree is 2 years and 3 months old. We started reading together when I was pregnant and I talked to her even before she was born.
Richard: I love that you said “We started reading together!” That’s exactly what happened. You were reading and she was responding! Her brain learned to recognize your voice! We now have research that says a baby can hear the mother’s voice in the womb and when mothers read and talk to their babies the baby can recognize that voice in the third trimester.
Lesson #2: It’s all about bonding.
After birth, we started using flash picture cards and reading baby books. We started with small board books, the classics, rhyme books, and books that allowed her to touch and feel. I loved to talk to her and sing rhymes and I could tell she loved it too. Our first win was the love for books!
Richard: I think you discovered the secret to teaching baby/toddlers to read. It’s not really about teaching reading; it’s about bonding with your child. Research says parents are on the receiving end too. They actually love their children more by reading and bonding with them.
Even as an infant my daughter wanted to read and sing all the time. At 8 or 9 months when she was speaking only a handful of words, she would sing some words from her favorite rhyme “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” If I paused for her to say the rhyming words at the end of each line, she could say them loud and clearly—“star, “are,” “high,” “sky.” I don’t know how she did it! It showed me that infants have fantastic brains for learning! Whatever exposure I gave Mahi seemed to work—she was soaking up language! Her singing the “Twinkle, twinkle” words was my greatest inspiration to continue.
Lesson #3: Let your child be your guide.
After 1 year of age, my daughter didn’t seem to like the flash cards as much, so we cut back on those and did more reading. What she seemed to love most were homemade books! I made them about her favorite animals and birds.
In spite of me being skeptical of screen time, at around 20 months I tried out one of the popular computer baby reading programs to see what it had to offer. When we used it together her response was tremendous. She had really good attention and it was fun for both of us.
Richard: All parents should have concerns about screen time and we should recognize that machines can’t teach a child to read, but you were using the computer as a tool. There is evidence that when the parent is there to respond and guide the child’s attention, computers can be a great tool for learning.
Lesson #4: Building the child’s spoken language system is a huge benefit.
We are a bilingual family. We speak English and Tamil. Mahi can now understand and speak both very well. After 20 months of age she started talking a lot. Her English vocabulary just exploded after we used the computer together with an increase of almost 60-70% of spoken words. Just before her 2nd birthday at 23 months she started to talk in four-word sentences!
When Mahi turned 2 years old, she started reading many of her small board books independently. Now that she feels confident, she never allows me to read what she is able to read by herself. She likes reading aloud to every person in the house these days. Since her receptivity is more for new words, I like to teach her up to 10 new words a day through flash cards or just by talking. I repeat them throughout the day to give her lots of practice and she picks them up quickly.
Richard: According to science at two or three years and beyond preschoolers can have a surge in word learning with as many as two hundred words in a month.
Mahi is now enjoying more advanced read-aloud books which can maintain her attention for at least 10 to 15 minutes per session. Before we begin reading I introduce the books in a fun way that she will understand. It’s clear that she now comprehends more during the read-aloud sessions which have significantly increased in length over the last six months. Reading aloud together is great fun for us.
I keep her books in a low shelf, so that she will have access to books all the time. And that’s why reading is the first thing she does when she wakes up in the morning. We rotate the books once every 10 days. The books on the shelves are mostly her favorites—some new and some above her age. We keep books in all the rooms and sometimes even on the couch. So wherever she is, Mahi feels invited to read.
Reading is one of our main activities during the day. We continue to have labels around the house and now she likes to go to them and read them by running her finger beneath them.
Richard: I suspect she is intuiting phonics. She knows that letters represent sounds and that sounds and letters in English words go from left to right. Intuiting phonics can happen very early without direct instruction when kids begin to analyze (think about) sounds, letters, words, and phrases on their own. Sometimes from looking at examples such as “a pig,” “a pig in a wig,” “2 pigs doing a jig!”, toddlers seem to catch on to letter to sound mapping for reading and sound to letter mapping for inventing spelling and writing.
Thank you Aishwarya Raji for sharing your story. It’s gratifying when our Psychology Today posts are impactful. This special one is reaching out from halfway around the globe to encourage parents to pay attention to literacy.
For more specifics on baby/toddler reading, check my post “Can Babies Really Read? What Parents Should Know!”
