Preparing Your Infant to Read

If you want your child to become any early reader—as early as, say, three or four years old—you must prepare his or her reading readiness even when he or she is only one-month old. Education should start from the first days of an infant's life: that is, the time when you start shaping his or her life. You can begin teaching your child reading before he or she can read, just as you can teach your child talking before he or she can talk. Parents can always teach their children ahead of their development. Remember, you are not forcing your child to learn: you are merely providing him or her with the opportunity.

Developing Motor Abilities and Sensory Perceptions

The development of motor abilities, closely  integrated with  that of sensory perceptions of your child, provides the  basis for your child’s future reading readiness.

Motor abilities

Try to open and loosen the fist (the first month).

Gently, stroke and massage your child’s fists on both sides until he or she opens his or her fists. Without the loosening of your child’s fists, your child cannot learn the grasping reflex, which is vital to learning to hold a pen to write.

Create the grasping reflex (the first month).

Make your child open his or her fists and then place your finger into his or her hands such that your child will grasp it. Alternately, using your own hand, open and close your child’s fists until he or she learns and masters the grasping reflex.

Stimulate the deliberate and active grasping (the second month).

Place various bright objects within the movement range of your child’s hands. Do not place them directly into your child’s unclenched fists, but rather guide them so that the grasping becomes incidental.

Sensory perception

Develop visual perception (the third month).

Teach and train your child to follow moving objects with his or her eyes by increasing the speed of the moving objects and the range of their movement. Also, teach your child  to follow these objects from various positions.

Develop the coordination of hearing and sight (the third month).

Show your child  the  connection  between  what  he or she  sees  and hears simultaneously: your child must learn that when he or she hears a sound, the object that makes the sound is where the sound comes from. That may look relatively simple to parents, but not to infants.

Provide abundant auditory experience (the third month).

Supply your child with human voices, singing, music, sounds from toys, animal sounds, everyday sounds, such as running water from a tap, a doorbell ringing, and clapping hands, among others. Express delight in all the different sounds you hear.  The association of sounds with satisfying experiences prepares your child for his or her subsequent language and speech development.

Yes, you can start teaching and preparing your infant to read as he or she develops or grows up. Read my book to find out all the 29 steps to teach your child to read, beginning as early as in the infant stage.

Stephen Lau