When my four-year-old son was in nursery school he raised his hand to get his teacher’s attention.
“Yes, Daniel?”
Daniel pointed to the word “Conneticut" written on the blackboard and said, "You spelled Connecticut wrong” She looked at the board and realized he was right.
‘Daniel, how did you know it was wrong?” asked the perplexed teacher.
“It’s because I have a young and powerful brain!” Daniel triumphantly replied.
His teacher contacted me by phone shortly thereafter, told me what Daniel had said, and asked me how he could possibly know about the misspelled word.
I told her that when he was almost two years old, I started to teach him how to read.
She was full of more questions. “Why did you bother to teach him to read? Surely he would have learned that in school at the developmentally appropriate age.”
I had no idea what she meant by a developmentally appropriate age. All I knew is that Daniel was a superb reader so he must have been ready to read. “Maybe yes, maybe no,” I replied. "Haven’t you read all those newspaper stories about rampant illiteracy in America? I simply decided that there was no way my son would end up illiterate or a poor reader. As I saw things, reading was too crucial for success in school and in life to leave to chance. That’s why I did the job myself. His education, I hope you understand, is ultimately my responsibility. Don’t you agree?” All I heard in reply to my question was a muffled grunt.
She continued with a noticeable edge to her voice. “Who taught you how to do it? You must be a teacher.”
“Nah…I am a CPA and no one taught me …all I did was teach him the alphabet, the sounds the letters make, and oh yes, I made sure he had tons and tons of practice. It was all really very simple. Honest, his brain did most of the work.”
By the shrillness of her response, I was sure she was about to deliver a cow. “YOU REALLY TAUGHT HIM PHONICS WHEN HE WAS TWO YEARS OLD?!" She said the word phonics like it was some sort of snake venom. This was my first indication that there was a problem somewhere with our schools and phonics. It would not be until several years later that I’d learn about the bizarre things going on in reading instruction at our schools.
I remember the evening I made that fateful decision as though it were yesterday. “I’m going to teach Daniel how to read to me!” I hollered to my wife who was watching television in the next room. Daniel was standing on his bed, and probably wondered what his silly Daddy was yelling about. He didn’t know then, nor did I, how much those few words would change our lives. Suddenly Daniel’s bed became our classroom and I became his first teacher. From that day on, things in our family would never be quite the same.
At the time, I had no idea that anyone would even think of teaching a two year old how to read. In fact, I fancied myself as a sort of pioneer. Was I wrong about that! I had no idea that for centuries parents have been teaching their children how to read.
My lack of teaching experience never bothered me a whit. I never created lesson plans and took every lesson one day at a time. I simply relied on old-fashioned common sense and trial and error to chart my course. This was nighttime learning fun between my son and me. I certainly was not worried about pedagogy. As it turned out, my total ignorance of contemporary reading instruction methodology was of crucial importance to my later success because it kept me away from something called whole language, the all-time dumbest educational invention ever. Ignorance, as it is said, can be bliss.
The lessons began . . .
To start, I began to teach Daniel the basic building blocks of reading – the letters of the alphabet and their sounds (phonics). That turned out to be the wisest possible beginning. A friend gave me Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever which has the alphabet on the first two pages. In the most entertaining ways possible, I taught Daniel the alphabet, both lower and upper case. We practiced and reviewed the letters on those first two pages for several months, literally branding the alphabet and their sounds into Daniel’s long-term unforgettable memory. Another great aid in teaching him the alphabet was the alphabet song. I must have sung it with him a million times and he enjoyed it every time. Unlike adults, little kids love repetition. That’s how they learn best.
And so it went. Every day I added a few new letters and constantly reviewed letters previously learned. I somehow knew that he had to learn the alphabet and their sounds as well as he knew his own name and constant practice and review (drill and practice) was the only way to do it. If there was any one key to my success, it was certainly constant long-term repetitive practice. When I learned that today’s educators speak of drill and practice in disparaging terms, I began to understand why we have a reading problem.
There is one crucial element in this that must never be forgotten. Boredom is the kiss of death in learning so I played lots of learning games. I laughed and smiled a lot, celebrated Daniel’s triumphs and showed genuine enthusiasm for his progress. In other words, I joined Daniel in his world. It would have been ludicrous for me to expect Daniel to come into my boring and stuffy adult world. To make things even more interesting, I rarely dwelled on any subject too long. I might start a lesson with a five-minute conversation about the sound of the letter P and then ask Daniel if water is a liquid, gas or solid. After that, I might ask him to show me four fingers on his left hand or even what the ancient Greek Democritis is noted for.
As the weeks of nightly instruction continued, I discovered, much to my delight, that this teaching business was not a chore. Instead, I found myself eagerly looking forward to the lessons. I was enjoying myself enormously and I was fascinated by the speed of Daniel’s progress. I hadn’t yet grasped how amazingly fast little kids learn. Of particular enjoyment were our Socratic like learning conversations. “Daniel, do you know that everything in the world is made of little things called atoms?” The subjects of these conversations varied. Since my two year old had the whole world to learn about, almost anything that popped into my head was of value.
After about one month of these lessons, an unexpected problem arose. It is often said that preschool children should not be pressured into learning and I agree. However, the sages who caution parents about pressure have the culprits mixed up. Once Daniel got a taste of all the learning fun and the undivided attention from me, he began to mercilessly pressure me! “Hey, Daddy, how about some more lessons – some more math – more letters.” What started out as fifteen minute lessons soon became forty minutes or more. His demands for more of everything were relentless.
Me Okay, Daniel, what’s this letter? Daniel P Me What sound does a P make? Daniel puh Me You’ve got it! Now, how many fingers am I holding up? Daniel Five Me If I take one away, what then? Daniel Four Me Right again. You’re terrific! Do you know you have a young and powerful brain?
Then came the little words . . .the most commonly used two- and three-letter words. We practiced them on flash cards until he knew them instantly by sight. Count among them: the, I, a, you, is, to, me, he, it, was, can, if, in, are, on, of, and maybe fifty more.
Amazingly, after about four or five months, when the little words, the alphabet and their related sounds were firmly in his long term unforgettable memory, my son, not yet two and a half years old, started to read – really read – not just parrot words he’d memorized. He was able to decode long words simply by sounding out the letters.
Daniel considered reading just another game played with his Daddy. He thought it a challenge when I said those oft-spoken words, “sound it out” As a result, after learning phonics, he’d try to read anything. Since no one told him that words like plethora, obtuse, lethargic, bellicose, and erudite were big words – college level words – he’d tackle them too by sounding them out. Daniel read every word in the Best Word Book Ever at least a hundred times. “How about the Take Turns Game, Daniel?” I would turn to any page in the book and Daniel would start reading. He read three words and then I did the same. Or, Daniel would read a full sentence and I would read the next one. Taking turns reading aloud made Daniel want to read – he just had to keep up with his Daddy. Little kids, I soon learned, are intensely competitive. They adore winning.
I did not limit his reading material to his kid’s books. We also read the newspaper, street signs, license plates, recipes – anything in print. Daniel wasn’t fussy. Being a CPA, I was especially proud after he read the first page of a 1040 tax return. “Hey Daddy, what does adjusted gross income mean?”
Daniel made lots of mistakes and so, to protect his ego, I invented the mistake game. This game enabled him to catch me making a mistake. I reasoned that if Daniel saw that his Daddy could make a mistake and not have a snit, he’d learn to accept them. It worked.
Daniel Let’s play the mistake game. Me Okay, you go first. Daniel What sound does CH make? Me Shhhh Daniel You made a mistake Daddy. Try again. Me Are you sure I made a mistake Daniel? Daniel Yes Daddy. A CH makes the CHA sound. Me You’re right! Gosh, are you smart!
One of our favorite game was the DO IT game. In order for him to understand that there is a reason for reading, a message to be understood in everything written. I would print a message on a piece of paper such as “close your eyes and jump up and down.” If Daniel read the instruction and started jumping up and down, I knew he was reading for comprehension – the only reason for reading. He never lost that game.
Some spelling instruction systems say that it is all right for a child to invent his or her own spelling, that sooner or later kids will learn the correct spelling. I didn’t buy that invented spelling nonsense. I thought it better to learn how to spell correctly the first time than to unlearn the incorrect spelling later.
Final results? After investing about 30–40 minutes a night for about two years, the results were quite gratifying. Daniel entered kindergarten reading and spelling at the fourth or fifth grade level. But even more than that, when he was four I had him tested by an educational psychologist who told me Daniel had a genius level IQ of 148.
Some people tell me that Daniel could read because he was born super-gifted, unusually bright, a genius. I’d sure like to think that is true, that he inherited my brainy genes, but I know better. Books like Kindergarten Is Too Late by Masaru Ibuka and How To Multiply Your Baby’s Intelligence by Glenn Doman taught me that Daniel wasn’t born a genius with anything that millions of other children across the world do not possess. What I did, however, was to make him use it. I did not teach my son how to read to make him smart. At the time, I had no clue about that interesting byproduct. However learning how to read exercised his brain which acted like a brain growth catalyst and made him very smart. Reading acts like push-ups for the brain. The realization of what my teaching had done to my son’s intellect fascinated me to no end. I had literally created high intelligence!
October 9, 2004
