My pre-schooler and phonics/learning to read

[JessiCake]

I should start by saying that we live in the sort of part of W London where a certain degree of what (for want of a better term) I'll call 'pushiness' is very much the norm.

DD is just 4 and due to start school in Sept. For various reasons we have chosen an independent school but it is a non-selective one (one of the reasons we chose it)

Her (lovely) pre-school is doing some great work on learning letters (they've been doing this for a while now) and she is now slowly moving into the realm of basic phonics. The pre-school work with them at their own pace, so the kids are at very different levels.

DD is NOT INTERESTED IN PHONICS AT ALL. Well, that's not strictly true. Whatever marginal interest she may have is totally supserseded by her personality type which is that she hates not being able to do something instantly. So even when she expresses an interest in looking at some basic phonics (her cousin gave her an old workbook) my heart absolutely sinks because I know she won't 'get it' within 3 seconds and this will lead to her getting frustrated, upset, and giving up immediately.

So we have steered clear. She starts school in Sept and we will obv give all the support she needs then to what she is learning in school.

BUT... from recent conversations with other mums, I have got the impression that DD is very very behind compared to where pretty much all the other kids are. Some are taking home actual phonics reading books for reading 'practice' (DD only just knows all her letters, and has wobbles even on that) and a couple of her friends are able to read simple picture books too.

I desperately don't want her to get to school and be 'behind' where all the others are as I know her only too well and she is so incredibly sensitive that it will knock her confidence. She is the kind to get terribly upset when she can't run as fast as her friends and she doesn't get 'spurred on', she just gets upset and gives up.

So.. should I, against most of my better instincts, try to do more at home with her? I think really both DH and I are a little surprised she's not showing any interest in the phonics etc because she is so obviously very bright (not just saying this - she catches onto concepts incredibly fast, she makes terrifically astute observations, her imagination is phenonmenal and her vocabulary etc is noticeably very advanced) and because she just loves being read to so much. Her concentration is such that she will sometimes sit for up to an hour being read to and she is increasingly choosing 'chapter books' from the library for me to read to her as she just loves 'stories' so much and gets so much out of them.

But phonics - she couldn't care less. She would rather just play, and until very recently, I felt anything else was best left until formal 'school'.

So was a right, or should we be encouraging her more? DH and I have a horror of pushing her but otoh gentle encouragement isn't pushing, i suppose?

Thanks for any advice or suggestions in advance.

OP, DS (now 8) hated phonics and didn't get it at all. He quite liked the rhymes but didn't understand that "Ah ah ants on my arm are causing me alarm" was all about the "ah" sound. He was never great at sounding out and blending either.

None of this has ever stopped him being a good reader, he just reads differently. He recognises the shapes of words, so "cat" is a different word entirely to "bat" to him. Despite not liking phonics, he's been above expected levels (or whatever the term is) fir reading since the end of Reception, and is now ploughing through Harry Potter with his peers. I suspect that this is largely down to reading a little every day, more than anything else.

Just a comment on the side, try to make it clear to your DD that even when she does learn to read by herself, you will still read TO her.

Kids are prone to making all sorts of assumptions and I'm sure some are reluctant to work on learning to read because they think their parents will no longer read to them.

And you mentioned that your DD adores being read to. It may not be just the 'accessing great stories' thing that she enjoys, but also the time you spend together, cuddled up, just the two of you.

But I agree with all the PPs that there is zero need to stress about it. You worry about her being put off reading by realising that her peers are 'all' (it's never going to be all) ahead of her. I'd say the risk is much higher that she is put off reading by you turning it into a chore for her, making her learn formally when she isn't yet ready.

Chapter books age 4!!! Come on let the child be a four year old fgs

"He recognises the shapes of words, so "cat" is a different word entirely to "bat" to him" however cat is the same shape as cot and cut and eat and oat and just as bat is the same shape as hat so it's a pretty limited (totally useless) strategy for reading

Thanks everyone!

QuiteLikely5 - what an extraordinary response.

I do let my daughter be a four year old, thanks.

Almost all of our time is spent on the sitting room floor playing with whatever bizarre combination of Playmobil figures, baby dolls, Trolls figurines and crappy plastic handbag she has deemed worthwhile turning into a game that particular day.

Outside of this, we potter in the park, take her dolls for walks in the doll's pram, muck about with Playdoh, watch far far too many Disney movies (roughly one a day), paint splodgy pictures, play in her wigwam, bake revoltingly sweet, E-number-filled Trolls-colour cupcakes...

And yes, in amongst all this (which I hope you'd consider letting her be a 4 year old) we sometimes sit down for a cuddle on the sofa and read a chapter book too.

She adores her older cousin who has all the Rainbow Magic books, which is where she first heard about them, so we read those. Trust me, we wouldn't be reading those if I had my say, I think they're pretty dire. Or the Princess In Black books - have you come across those at all? All short chapter books with an extremely high ratio of pictures to words, and always picked by her on the basis of the fact that she is obsessed by fairies and princesses and we are frankly running out of picture books (although we do read those too, almost exclusively in fact) that have the kind of girly princessy stories she craves.

Always but always at her suggestion.

I mean, it's not as if I'm sitting there ploughing through War and Peace, now, is it?

Anyway, thanks for the very very helpful indeed advice from others and I hugely appreciate it!!

Just reminiscing about rainbow magic!
DD1 now 15 had all of them. She started on them at around 4 too (me reading to her of course).
Nothing at all wrong with them - any reading is great.
She developed her love of reading because of those.
She reads a couple of books a week even now - it used to be more but GCSE revision is getting in the way! She goes to a library club once a month at our local library and has an amazing vocabulary.
Don't ever knock rainbow magic!!

mrsZ I imagine it is a little more refuge than that, but that is how gusvteacher explained it to me. All words with different letters are different shapes. He can, and will, read pretty much anything that comes his way now. It may not be a recommended strategy, but it has not been detrimental to progress either. His reading has never been of any concern to any of his teachers.

Whilst that's good to hear, he has at least one teacher who has very little idea of what she is talking about for the reasons mrz explained.

I woudn't worry at all. I am a parent volunteer in reception and the ability across the class is vast. Some can read well, some (I was in today) have only just started to 'hear' the blend of a word and can say c-a-t = cat instead of just last week they'd sound out c-a-t and then say 'cow'! So my point is, it doesn't matter whether your child can read or not in pre-school, they will be taught in reception and every child is different - they will all pick it up in the end.

As for the behvious of 'if i can't do it instantly, i'm going to get upset and give up' - my daughter has an element of this, particulalry in pre-school too. What helped was that i had to show her that I, and other children and adults, needed to practice things too; very few people can do something well for the first time, they have to work at it. i even pretended to not catch things, or not be able to do some simple daily task and then say 'oh look, mummy can't do it, I'll have to practice to learn and get better' and then ensure she saw me practising whatever it was over a few days/ weeks. it was slow, but it has worked. She just thought that things she sees adults and doing everyday were things we could do well, instantly. She's in reception now and a lot better about it now.

"I imagine it is a little more refuge than that, but that is how gusvteacher explained it to me" I'm afraid I'd be very concerned if any of our staff were talking about children recognising words by shape. Word shape is part of the whole word theory that has failed countless children often seen once children begin to meet more unfamiliar technical vocabulary later in school when they have no effective strategy for reading accurately.

Dd1 was a little like this and even in yr1 refused to read because she thought we would stop reading to her. She finally gave in when she realised that all her friends were enjoying reading. She is now one of the top in English at a highly academic school (her choice of school).

I would say too that it is an important lesson to learn to persevere. We praised that more than the act of reading itself. Dd now has a great work ethic too because she sees the value of keeping going even when difficult.

OK, so should I be concerned about DS's reading because he learnt via unconventional means? He is 8.5 and a free reader. He is reading the early Harry Potter books to himself at the moment. He reads out loud to me a couple of times a week, and has no trouble, even with non-standard Potteresque words. Whatever deficiencies he may have once had seem to have been overcome.

I can't tell you whether you should be concerned but my eldest could read more difficult texts than Harry Potter pre reception and I wish I'd not listened to his teachers when they told me not to worry because he was a very advanced reader.

Mrz, what problems did your son encounter? You've mentioned this before and I'm intrigued. My DD was not as advanced as your son in YR but I'd be grateful to be told what to look out for.

I wouldn't bother doing anything but reading to her/enjoying learning/finding out things in the garden or whatever.

My dd was not interested in anything but playing age 4. She liked us reading to her at bedtime though. She started school just about knowing the alphabet song, so no visual recognition of letters at all.

Her rate of learning was quick throughout YR and Y1 and she went to "free reader" at the end of Y1, before most of those who could read pre-school. Literacy is her thing at school she's really good at these days (11 now). I don't think it matters when they start reading. Dd has always got her nose in a book and she was comparatively late to start.

What helps later I think is them having a wide range of experiences to write about. So hence playing, going out, doing things, seeing things are so important I think.

Just my view as a parent.

I really wouldn't worry about your dad not teading before school - loads of great reasons why above.
If you have the time, where I'd maybe spend it is on building your child's resilience, helping her fail safely and see you fail too and maybe do some projects which you have to persevere at together. Phonics is just a skill like any other which when she's ready to learn she will fly off :)

Ginmummy1 - I'm not mrz but perhaps my answer as to my experience of the whole words method might help.

I learnt to read using the whole word method (well before I went to school through having my mum pointing to words as she was reading me stories, though without her realising that that was what I was doing) and went through school at a time when this was the norm so I didn't learn any phonics based techniques there. It didn't stop me from being able to read, or decode technical vocab that I'd never come across before (I have postgraduate qualifications that required a huge amount of reading in a short period of time). Where I had real difficulty was with spelling. Because I didn't know how to break down a word to work out how it might be spelt. I still have to picture the word (or actually write it down ) to be able to spell it. Even relatively simple words like friend or separate took me years to master. And I didn't learn how to do it until I was well into secondary school.