glenn doman

[workstostaysane]

anyone done it?

Message withdrawn

was he? why?

Message withdrawn

hey snorkle,
i met a woman who used it with her daughter and said it was great. she was reading at 1. also, if you look on youtube there is a very entertaining vid of a 1 year old reading. made me think about it. also reviews of the book on amazon are very positive even though not all the reviewers had done the whole program. bit like SWMNBN, it seems that if you don't take it as a life philosophy, then it may be useful.
do you know anyone who's tried it?

Message withdrawn

i read that too. most of the critisism seems to be about using his methods on brain damaged kids. as for 'normal' children, it seems that there is only anecdotal and no scientific evidence to support his theories. i've only come across people who have done it successfully.
as you and me are the only ones on this thread, i guess he's not too popular or well known here.
thanks for your thoughts though

Message withdrawn

hey snorkle.

i agree with your concerns. have not told anyone about it as they will think i'm nutters. dh very sweetly says to go ahead and try as he is quite convinced i am nutters anyway.
i'm thinking of doing it for fun really. i certainly don't expect or want dd to be reading at 1, but early reading skills might be useful. also, i'm not much impressed with the phonetic system of teaching children to read which seems to me complicated and arduous. do you have any experience of it?
i have flash cards in spanish (bought online by accident i promise! didn't realise they were flashcards till i opened box and then couldn't be bothered to send back) and 8 month dd LOVES looking at them while i read her the names out loud. so am wondering if she would enjoy it as much in english. be a bit embarrassing if she could read spanish (we aren't spanish btw) before english..

will certainly let you know how i get on. we have no tv so spend lots of time sitting around playing together so am not worried about loss of normal baby time.
finally, am thinking of home educating so clearly am pretty nutters anyway, but she wouldn't be bored at primary school in that case.

Message withdrawn

glenn would have them looking at flashcards from birth, but i think his ideal is starting at 6-12 months. i do think that she will pick up reading anyway as we read a lot together anyway and she enjoys it.
i have been doing it a bit over the past few weeks but am a bit bored of it right now so haven't bothered. thats why i posted to begin with - to see if anyone strongly recommended continuing. i'm tempted to make some cards with pictures on them (in english) and see what she makes of those.

Some children's brains are wired up for early reading. My son could read a few words before he was 2 but the flip side is that his speech was delayed. I didn't hothouse him - stopping him would have been the problem! It was all look and say - phonics came later when he went to nursery.

We did actually try it with DS who is now 2.10.

We didn't get very far with it.

We got the numbers kit, and the letters / word kit.

I think the idea is by constantly showing them the dots and the words, some of it will eventually sink in.

None of it did with DS.

We didn't pressure him at all, but there were times he asked for his numbers, and we stopped as soon as he got tired of it.

He now can count to about 12, and can recognise the actual numbers, but I don't put it down to the Doman "work" we did with him.

I really wouldn't recommend it....

Being able to recognise words is not reading. The kids on youtube are not reading they are associating a shape with an action or word, it is a party trick nothing more. To be able to read is to be able to decipher a word you have never be seen before and work out what it says. Hubby was taught to read by Look and Say in the 60's which is basically learning by flashcards. Consequences were that he didn't learn to read until he was 12 when they finally let him use phonics.

That was my thought too Christwisty, and it doesn't just apply to GD's techniques.

What are these kids supposed to do when they see a word they haven't been exposed to before? They have no way of interpreting the letters....

sorry christywhisty

Hi, I have tried the Doman / lessonettes / Titzer method for reading. My son was reading words he liked, mostly food, before 1. The problem with the method, if you don't computerize, is that it takes too much time to prepare the materials.

I am starting a Spanish preschool for my child and the other mothers who teach with lessonettes. It will meet 2 times a week and the teacher will make the materials.

As to recognizing words as not reading, well, I think I like the definition of reading in Tony's Buzans book, something like Left Brain, Right Brain ...

As to phonics. When a large vocabulary has been acquired, kids absorb natural phonics. For example, they know 20-40 words with the letter "b". When they come across a new word with "b", they know the sound.

As to forced phonics, that is the method used in most schools and it has problems, including sublingualization (hearing your voice in your head as you read), slower reading usually at the speed speech, and lower comprehension.

Ideally, I think the best method is lessonettes till a child has a fairly large vocabulary, then reinforce the natural phonics. Forced phonics first is much to didactic and "nonjoyous" for a kid. You want them to have fun! Additionally, phonics is not ideal for the English language. I would use forced phonics for Spanish, however, because it has much less phonems and is a much more consistent language. English has to many contradictions for forced phonics.

As to the Spanish cards you accidentally acquired, I am interested in them if you don't want them. Our preschool is non-profit and takes donations .

Sorry don't agree Vidalsmum. DH didn't learn to read until he was 12 because of methods like the ones you prescribe.
My ds's school used various methods including jolly phonics and words

Sorry don't agree Vidalsmum. As I said previously DH didn't learn to read until he was 12 because of methods like the ones you prescribe.
My ds's school used various methods including jolly phonics and word recognition.Word recognition didn't work with him at all.
Both of them are very bright intelligent people. DH is an electronics engineer and DS 11 just got very high marks in his SATS including reading.
Some children like DD seem to be able to absorb reading and don't even need to be "taught" She was just shown the basics of phonics and was off.
Methods like word recognition have been experimental disaster
By 1996 ofsted found that 80% of 7 year olds had reading age below their chronical age and 25% not being able to read after 2 years at school, which is why phonics are being reintroduced

MRI scans show that the brain actually reads one sound at a time mri brain scans while reading

I am totally uncovinced that a baby that recognises a shape of a word is "reading"
Most babies will produce a "party trick" if you spend time teaching them it.

The question with methods is at what age did christywhisty's DH start to learn to read? I have two dear friends who learned to read with the Doman lessonette method. My college roommate learned to read before age 3 and her two younger siblings learned simultaneouly since their mom "played" reading with them together.

Another friend, with a completely different and less fortunate background learned to read at 4 when her mother was trying to teach her older, mentally disabled brother. She was just playing by herself in the same room and picked it up.

So, the questions for successful reading programs are, what is the age, and was the program tailored to the specific interest and culture of the child.

I don't think a child of 5 or older would particularly benefit from Doman lessonettes. Also, the key is to give words that the child is interested in. Having a school "teacher in a box" look and say program isn't lessonettes and probably isn't really helpful to teach reading because it is not tailored to the child. There is much research that once in school, boys especially have problems reading because much of the material is developed and chosen by females, and doesn't meet their interests.

(Incidentally, my husband knew how to read before starting school. He was a behaviour problem because he would act up during phonics. He still remembers this vividly to this day. He hated it and his parents spoke to the principal to let him advance and skip phonics. He was permitted to do so and tells me he was a model student subsequently.)

Also, I live in the US and most of the research material I have been reading comes from Columbia's Teachers college and researchers of US students, so I am not familiar with ofsted or UK reading programs. But, I will look into it.

Hi,

I have a newborn and read 3 of the Doman books and felt it made common sense and it appealed to me.

I searched these fora for arguments against and found lots of mums saying things like "let a child be a child", "kids don't need to read, crawl early, do maths....etc" Well that's their opinion, but its just an opinion, and was backed up with nothing, so I ignored it.
My thought at this time was if the kid enjoys it, why not do it, Doman has shown its of benefit, so if its doing no harm, why not take as much good from it as you can - makes sense right?
Well now I learn Doman is widely discredited in much of his work, which throws into doubt all his claims, and also rubbishes my own argument that doing will be of some benefit.
I'm not going to be doing this programme, despite having bought books and built materials and am writing this post to give a proper negative argument for people like me who may be looking for a concrete against argument before deciding to go ahead.
Do what you like with your kids, but if you are thinking of this please read the following links, including one from the American Academy of Paediatrics. In short:

"The Doman-Delacato patterning technique is pseudoscience because it is premised on a bankrupt and discarded theory and, more importantly, has failed to demonstrate any significant effectiveness under controlled conditions, and yet it is being purveyed as an innovative and effective treatment, and even possibly a cure. The IAHP and NACD cannot support the claims that they make, and are therefore guilty of fraud. Current regulations should prevent such abuse, but unfortunately such institutions as the FDA lack the manpower and the teeth to properly enforce such regulations and fulfill their role to protect the public from the snake-oil salesman, dressed up in the modern clothes of alternative medicine, that increasingly prey upon the vulnerable, the sick, and the desperate."

pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/104/5/1149.full

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Institutes_for_the_Achievement_of_Human_Potential#_

www.srmhp.org/archives/patterning.html