Adapted Glenn Doman Method to Teach Your Baby How to Read
Teaching Even Younger Babies How to Read: The New
Experience.
In the experience I have developed with my three children, I
created an Adapted learning method based on Glenn Doman's
described first four steps:
- The visual differentiation (how to prepare the material);
- The proper vocabulary (cards which reflected the daily reality
of the baby);
- The vocabulary of the family environment (which reflected the
objects which the baby came in contact with at home, for his
daily interactions), and
- The vocabulary to build sentence's structures (articles,
prepositions, and adjectives).
Sentences were not introduced as the Doman method suggests for
the 5th step. The other steps, including the 5th, were
suppressed in our experience, due to our circumstances, since
the babies' own preferences suggested that these steps would be
skipped, indicating what the brain needed or not to experience.
When the babies completed reading the whole vocabulary, also
knew the alphabet and already read elementary school books,
traffic signals, and billboards in the streets.
However, the reading assimilation process was global, since
steps 5, 6, and 7 of Doman's method were introduced
simultaneously to steps 1, 2, 3, and 4. To explain it better,
while I played with the babies the game of the cards, the whole
family showed them reading as an object and how reading
presented itself circumstantially in a community context (in the
TV, the media, and the traffic signs).
The brain itself created mechanisms to find similarities and
dissimilarities between some letters and others and some words
and others.
As the process of stimulation in a family environment followed
its course, the assimilation by the babies of the words which
reflected their accommodation of contents ended up resulting in
connections of objects and the objects' representations, in such
an impressive velocity that when the babies were two years of
age, they already could read and demonstrated a passion for the
game of reading. The babies also demonstrated that they were
ready for writing. By the same pleasurable process, which they
felt while playing with an object until they tired of it, the
babies played with words. However, the difference became that
words were part of a very vast grouping, which led the babies to
combine them, discover them, and the game kept extending itself
until the babies demonstrated that they could integrate it.
We realize that this game of learning will never come to an end,
since it started as early as with a baby, the human being will
tend to try to manage it for his whole existence.
This leads us then to say that teaching the child to read only
at 6 years of age is to take away from him/her the opportunity
of discovering the learning game of reading at the stage at
which it could be best experienced - at the earliest age, when
the brain elaborates its first mental schemes, and in which the
mental activities still were not restricted in their development
within the natural and potential perspectives.
It is very easy to establish the systematic of the method of how
to teach a baby how to read and to wait for each phase of
development to occur exactly as we expect. It is known that only
the intention of the parents to teach their children how to read
early on, can already result in facts that would better
distinguish their children of those who did not try it. Even the
most disorganized attempt will yield observable results, which
are the most positive and encouraging results, it is worth
highlighting! The procedure adopted needs to be very disastrous
or complicated not to yield results. From the simplicity of this
initiative, it is already possible to obtain better results than
if one would start to teach the child only at 6 years of age. At
six, it is already too late! The curiosity and motivational
potentialities of the brain would already by then be
deactivated. The later you start, the harder it is the task to
teach to teach the child how to read.
Glenn Doman, in his book "How to Teach your Baby to Read",
affirms that the child prior to 5 years of age is able to absorb
a tremendous amount of information and can accept information at
an incredible rate. He says that the more information a child
receives before completing 5 years of age, the most he/she
retains; and that the child has tremendous quantities of energy
for such. Besides that, the child at this age group has a great
desire to learn. He/she can learn how to read and wants to learn
how to read.
In my experience, I realized that the most important factor
while initiating the process is to be certain that the parent(s)
will have the proper attitude and adequate approach, or better,
that the enthusiasm should be kept; and that the parent should
not pressure or retard the steps in presenting information to
the baby. The other factor is to be attentive to the size,
format, and order of presentation of the material to be read by
the baby.
Also of importance is the observation of when to start each
reading session and when to end it. To start the session, the
most adequate time is every moment in which the baby is in a
good mood. Do not take him/her to read while cranky, crying, or
dissatisfied. The activity of playing must be happy and playful
both for the baby and the parent.
The time to end the activity of playing - which is the main
motivation of the method, must be before the baby loses
interest, so that in this way we can guarantee that the baby
will want to repeat the activity and live the moment of
happiness of being with the parent. During this moment, the baby
enjoys the parent's company and plays with new knowledge and
information. It is necessary to know exactly what the baby is
thinking, or better, to know his/her reaction in order to stop
each session prior to his/her desire to do so. The reader must
imagine that this is impossible to be done. But it is not so.
After a few sessions, it is possible to perceive exactly when it
is time to distance the baby from the card. If you have more
than one baby, you will see that each one has his/her own
rhythm, as I have found out with mine.
Adapted learning method (c) 2006 http://www.baby-can-read.com
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