Ordinary parents
If you’re an ordinary parent, who knows how to read the language you wish your child to read, then you can guide your child in Spontaneous Reading™. You don’t need a degree in education or psychology, you don’t need to be a genius, and you don’t need to buy anything at all.
However, you will need to make time for your child. Spontaneous Reading™ is not something you can assign to someone else. It requires daily, informal, unstressful interaction with your child. It demands that you model reading yourself and include your child in ordinary activities where print can be noticed. Learning to read spontaneously doesn’t happen in 15-minute lessons that you add into your already-busy day. It happens throughout the day, as you and your child move through the world.
Certainly, stay-at-home parents have more opportunities to support Spontaneous Reading™ than do parents who are working long hours and see their children only at the ends of the day or on weekends. If this describes your situation, then you will want to bring aboard your child’s caregiver, nanny or other parent to fill in the gap your own schedule leaves behind. There are no shortcuts to Spontaneous Reading™ and nothing you can assign your child to do on her own that will do the job. Your attention and guidance are required.
Ordinary parents can do this – can help their children read spontaneously – but they can’t leave everything to chance. That’s what we have done in the past: just waited until kindergarten and made no special effort to help kids discover reading. Just waiting for kindergarten is not the answer.
Your child deserves better than that.
Contact me at Patricia@PatriciaNanAnderson.com
