To think actually no my dd doesn't need to learn letters at 3

[Nicpem1982]

My dd is 3 in September, and mil was asking for present ideas this evening. The budget is silly so have asked her for a couple of small educational toys and some school shoes and remaineder into savings as don't want a house full of toys

Told her what we've bought mainly STEM based toys and games to which mil replied

"She needs to concentrate on letters from her birthday not just science and nature (my dd is a huge fan) she'll be behind if she can't read for reception"

I'm in no rush for my dd to read and write we encourage her interests (for the record she has fun toys to but she shows little interest in anything outside of the following

Nature hunts
Mud pie making
Playing on the park and generally being outside
Playing with her toys (mainly Lego, dinosaurs, board games, small world imaginative play)
Arts and crafts

For the record I have an excellent relationship with my mil but this has really irritated me, I don't want my dd forced into reading until she is ready the issue is my mil covers a large portion of our child care I'm now worried that she will start forcing her to try and learn to read and my dd will lose the love of books she has

Aibu to be irritated and think let my dd be herself at her own pace or should she be learning to read?

Pengggwn

That's not my impression. I suspect we are agreeing, with slight variations in what we consider 'formal learning

The children who don't catch up are not those of the angsty ones on this thread, they are overwhelmingly the ones who live in poor accomodation, who don't leave their houses much during the holidays, whose parents have mental health or drug problems, whose parents don't have books in the house, who don't talk to them or listen to them much, whose lives are restricted such that they have nothing to write about (when they do learn to write)

I can't really get worked up about middle class parents nit-picking about Phonics

I can get worked up about the anxiety being foisted on perfectly well-developing little kids

But the op hasn't specified what materials are being suggested. If they are workbooks and reading apps then yes she may have a point. Plastic letters,alphabet jigsaws,writing materials, letter games etc not so much.

Yoda I think you'd be surprised at how many MC parents there are who stick their kids on expensive iPads and have very few books in the house. Then you get the free expression parents as mentioned......

StillDriving no not all children will be, they develop at different rates. But it would not hurt to introduce her to letters and letter sounds if she is interested. They have all sorts of books with different characters for children. I bought my ds a Disney Cars Alphabet book, he loved it, certainly made it fun, same with numbers. I hate the way most learning books go up to 10, wish they went up to 20.

My ds 5 cannot read properly, despite school and myself really hammering it to him. He has developmental delay of 1 year. Can sound out letters, and blend some, he has been on the same level all year. But he is getting there. It did not click with me, until I was 6.

Ironing

I'm not surprised. Not just MC parents. I see it. It worries me that some kids are not out there in the real world; are not talking conversing with their parents as much in normal everyday life (on the bus, in cafes/ waiting rooms). How can you write if you can't formulate coherent sentences; if you haven't experienced different situation to write about?

wrote talking and conversing by mistake!!

can't imagine any decent person would force a child to read and I don't think is something you can force anyway.
Its not quite that simple though. A well meaning person could push a child with specific reading activities, and put pressure on them to remember letters, so that they associate all those things with hard work and people being a bit disappointed. Some bad preschool coaching could put a child off learning when they go to school.

OP, I really think you are worrying needlessly.
Your Mil is not going to be damaging your DD by playing letter games or getting her to practise gripping a pencil!

What are worried will happen to her?

Ds is just finishing reception, when he started he could recognise his name, a handful of numbers and words like mummy, daddy, dog - he certainly couldn't write them. We've had his report this week, he's above average at reading and by all accounts a bright little boy You don't need to teach this stuff, that's what school is for. It's far more important to get them to enjoy stories, be able to get on with their teachers and peers and just talk to them about the world and the things they show an interest in so they start school wanting to learn

Ds is just finishing reception, when he started he could recognise his name, a handful of numbers and words like mummy, daddy, dog - he certainly couldn't write them. We've had his report this week, he's above average at reading and by all accounts a bright little boy smile You don't need to teach this stuff, that's what school is for. It's far more important to get them to enjoy stories, be able to get on with their teachers and peers and just talk to them about the world and the things they show an interest in so they start school wanting to learn

Couldn't agree more with this

I didn't teach DS1 to read - he's about to start reception. I just read lots to him. He's taught himself to read pretty fluently including some quite tricky books (Roald Dahl etc.) and sounds out the difficult words or says 'HARD WORD' when he gets to one I think some kids are just naturally curious about reading for themselves.

I agree with OP in that all the messy/outdoor play is the most important thing at that age, and I think MIL is like my old-fashioned MIL who tells DS1 off for colouring outside the lines and takes all the credit for him holding his pen 'properly' and says 'muh, huh, tuh!'. I can understand your frustration OP!

I'm in one of those much-vaunted European countries where school starting age ranges from 5.5 to 7 (depending on region and to a degree on the individual child). They all (barring SEN, for which there is obv support) get it, and generally pretty quickly too, and observationally there is much less parental and teacherly angsting over it than in the UK.

Small bit of anecdata: I did English phonics with both my older ones over their last couple of years of kindergarten, irregularly and informally (had a big Jolly Phonics story book). Dc1 picked up German reading very quickly. Dc2 could phonetically sound out the longest words very soon after starting school, but it took over a year for synthesis to click. I do think there is a limitation to the capacity to help children 'get ahead' which all this very early learning has.

I would reject all 'shoulds' and worries about 'being behind' at this age (poor mite's not even 3 yet), but not reject any play with letters/words etc. It sounds from your OP a little bit as if you are setting up a 'STEM good, letters bad' thing which your MIL may be reacting to, consciously or not.

penggwyn did you miss where I said that it was important for a parent to develop a love of learning and an interest in the world? I hardly suggested sending them to school and not getting involved at all I see my job as a parent to facilitate my sons learning - so he has books, we talk about the countries we visit along with looking at his atlas, he reads the menu when we go for lunch, we bake and he weighs the ingredients etc etc. We ready after school and before bed, we draw together and play learning games. We do lots of things that help him to learn. But I'm not a teacher so yes, I do leave the formal teaching to school.

Oh, and according to my mother, and I believe her, I picked up reading aged nearly 2 from watching her read with my older brother. But that sort of case is outlying and not some kind of holy grail. I work with language and it is my main area of ability, but my dc1 (reading at 6 and a half) may well take a similar path.

(Oh, and when I say 'over a year' in my post above, that means dc2 wasn't reading fluently until 8, as he started school a couple of weeks shy of 7. He's now 9 and one of the better readers in his class, having skipped a year of school - a whole other thread).

Fair enough

Of course it isn't the be all and end all, but if you have a child with the intellectual potential to go to one of the best universities in the world, have an amazing learning experience, meet and hold conversation with many of the people who wrote the books in the areas they are interested in, debate with top minds, qualify for an exciting and lucrative career (assuming that is what they want), why wouldn't you want to set them up for that by making sure they are ahead of the academic curve, (without boring them or hothousing them)? What is wrong with a child enjoying reading before school? What is wrong with reading, that so many people complain that it stops children being children?

Of course there is nothing wrong at all with having these opportunities but I doubt there is a correlation between children learning to read before 5 and Cambridge students. I doubt the two are mutually exclusive. And I also would worry about a parent having a mentality that if they teach their kids to read at two that they will go on to study at the next universities in the country... it seems a little pushy to say the least.
And of course nothing wrong with encouraging your child to learn to read early if they show a natural interest in it... but if they don't (as the OP suggests) then why force it? Having the MIL mentality that the child will be 'behind' (i.e. failing) is an unhealthy one to project on to such a young child.