A Special Gift

Teaching your baby to read could be a joyous experience.
by Janet Dowman


For more than 40 years mothers all over the world have been teaching their babies to read.

There are two good reasons why it is so easy to teach a baby to read. The first is that babies are the best students in the world. Babies learn faster in the first 12 months of life than they will ever learn again. He can take in facts at a rate that is truly astonishing. In fact, he is a linguistic genius. By the time he is 3, he will have mastered his first foreign language without having had a single day of formal instruction.He will not only understand that language, but he will begin to speak it by this age. This is a miraculous accomplishment that we take completely for granted. We think that we are teaching him the English language, but we really teach him “Mommy,” “Daddy,” and “No”— and the rest of the thousands of words he will master he will do on his own. It is easy for him to learn to read because his brain is growing and developing faster at this moment than it ever will again. During this time he will absorb information effortlessly, like a sponge.

The second reason that it is so easy to teach a baby to read is that you have the very best teacher in the whole world for your baby right in your house— You. No one knows your baby as well as you do. No one loves your baby as much as you do. These are the two most important characteristics of a superb teacher— to know the student well and to adore him. What is equally important is that your baby knows you very well and your baby adores you.

Reading is not an academic subject. Instead, reading is a neurological function. We have five pathways into the brain: we can see, hear, feel, taste and smell. Everything we learn in our lifetime we learn through one of these five pathways. When we touch the baby’s stomach and we say “bellybutton,” this information travels to the brain via the auditory pathway. What arrives are electrochemical impulses conveying the idea “bellybutton.” We laugh and the baby laughs. The baby likes this word. When we hold up a new reading word and we say to the baby “bellybutton,” this information travels to the same brain, this time via the visual pathway. Again what arrives are electrochemical impulses conveying the idea “bellybutton.” Again the baby laughs. The same message arrives. The baby understands it through the visual pathway in the same way that he understood it through the auditory pathway.

The brain of the developing baby needs stimulation. There is no better way to grow the brain of the tiny baby than to teach the baby to read. When we hold up the big red word “bellybutton” and say to the baby “bellybutton,” both the visual and the auditory pathways are stimulated. When we stimulate the sensory pathways into the brain, the brain literally grows because the brain grows by use. What a superb opportunity we have when we teach the baby to read; we grow the brain and the end result is a baby who can read— one of the most important abilities human beings ever acquire in their lives.

Reading is natural. Babies are linguistic geniuses. They love to learn and they especially love to learn language. They love to hear language and it is only natural that they love to see it as well. Nothing could be more natural to mother and baby than to walk around the house as mother points to large red words and tells the baby “refrigerator,” “lamp,” “window.” In no time, mother must change the words because the baby needs new information all the time. Mother’s secrets for success are simple: The words are very big (two to three inches high) and they are red so that the baby’s immature visual pathway can absorb the information easily. Mother makes the tour often so that her baby can see the words frequently enough to store the information in his brain. Mother changes the words every few days so that the baby never gets bored. Mother stops before the baby wants to stop— a rule all teachers should follow if they want happy students. These little sessions are a natural, joyous part of the day. They are not scheduled.

Reading is vital. There are few joys that equal the joy of listening to a 4-year-old reading his favorite book to his little sister, or a 6-year-old reading her favorite poem from a book of poetry that she found on your bookshelf, or a 7-year-old scaring his cousins as he reads to them the witch scene from Macbeth. All parents want their children to be intellectually capable and independent, but few parents know that when you teach a baby to read, the baby will very quickly become a child who can read absolutely anything and who adores reading. Reading opens an entire universe to a child. There is no better gift any parent could give to their child.

Janet Doman is the co-author with Glenn Doman of How to Teach Your Baby to Read (Gentle Revolution Press).