Problems Arise When Children are Pushed to Read Too Early
The trend to teach reading in kindergarten is an unreasonable expectation for five year olds because they do not have the maturity of brain function needed for reading. Certain, specific visual-processing learning problems arise, as well as problems in attention and motivation.
Another type of spelling issue that can arise from premature reading instruction is the inability to recognize jumbled letter order—again, it matters only that the first and last letters are in the correct placement. The word “Teudseay” will be read as “Tuesday” despite misspelling, and the child may not even be able to recognize that it was spelled incorrectly.
The right brain’s language center also contributes to the process of applying phonics. A young child is able to memorize the sound that a letter “makes”–they usually enjoy the fun games and songs utilized to teach this. However, the application of those sounds to a group of letters making a word is a different process. When kids’ language centers have the ability to process words only as composite pictures made of connected lines–instead of as a series of letters each representing abstract sounds–the task to apply sounds to parts of the images remains developmentally hard to grasp. Proficient readers perform the task of applying phonics with the left brain’s language center, which remains undeveloped in most brains until the seventh year.
When five year olds are pushed to tasks requiring the abilities of the undeveloped hemisphere, patterns for learning problems in the future may develop. If children were permitted to wait until the left side of their brain was adequately developed, they could learn to read and spell with the parts of the brain designed to do it efficiently. Decades ago, when intense reading instruction occurred mid-year of first grade, just as most kids were turning seven, educational expectations were more in line with children’s developmental abilities. This turn of the seventh year, on average, is the magical time to start reading instruction because this is not only when the left brain is developed, but also the corpus callosum, which allows the two hemispheres to communicate to complete a task together.
When children have been taught to read before this bridge-like function has developed, they experience difficulties in reading comprehension. Because the right brain is largely responsible for painting the pictures that act out the words, perhaps we would expect comprehension to be no problem, as five year olds have this portion developed. However, because the right hemispheres is constantly taxed, trying to do the work the left hemisphere is designed to do, the child resorts to the only resource he has: memory. Short words work just fine as sight words, but when kids have only the right brain to utilize, they must encounter every word as a sight word. Memorization is their only way to cope and meet expectations, and they tire quickly reading only a short passage this way.
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Published in: Family
vaughanh | Apr 17, 2010 | Reply
I didn’t know any of this stuff but can’t help thinking that the later we leave children’s reading the harder they will find it to grasp, nine years old is way too late to be learning to read as in just two years time they will be going to high school.
Linda Phelps | Apr 20, 2010 | Reply
Terrific article–well written!
Kristin | Apr 20, 2010 | Reply
I must say I disagree with this. Although we are asking more out of the children, no matter what age, most students and even adults have some trouble with comprehension. When teaching children in kindergarten, we start with the letters and sight words throughout the year. We don’t expect them to spell everythig correctly, but we do expect by that they wrote phonemically (writing what they hear). The words we do have them spell correctly are usually the sight words that have been introduced. As for the reading, they learn the skills they need to blend sounds to figure out the words. As for comprehension, questions are always being asked and activities are always being done to assist this area. Out of a class of 20, I would say at least 6-7 still have trouble. Out of those 6, 1 will repeat kindergarten, 1 is an ESL student and 2 others that are low.
I believe that these skills are difficult at a young age, but are achievable at a lower expectation such as retelling, the charaters, and setting.
Jennifer | Apr 20, 2010 | Reply
Eye doctors can conform that kids eyes are not even ready at this age to focus on close work. They are not wired for this. I am a mother of avid readers, one late bloomer, but am married to a man who struggles terribly with comprehension, though to this day he tries so hard to overcome it. This article explains exactly what we have known for a fact… See More happened to him. He is unusually gifted in many ways, and the flip side of that was being a VERY late bloomer with reading. He could not master every thing at once, his brain chose for him that reading was delayed. He was forced and pushed and ridiculed and held back and there are parts of his wiring that are completely scrambled because of it. No diagnosis was given, except a teacher that said, “He has an ‘order disorder’!” You will not find a more motivated human being than he is, and he has tried to the point of massive frustration to overcome it He must read and re-read and re-read and all very slowly and he retains only a very small amount of the information. It drives him insane. He misspells horribly as well; the words do not imprint in his brain at all or make any sort of impression for him. Imagine someone arguably brilliant at strategy, problem solving, inventing products and solutions, and design and building said products as well as a house by himself, someone who had amazing social perception and could “read” people very well and relate to,train and lead them almost with a sixth sense. I don’t see a stupid failure there, but that’s what the school system labeled him when he was small. When we saw our first son start off with the same delay, we decided to offer him books, to encourage him to have interest, but did not panic or label or show disdain when he could not yet process the words into anything meaningful. We provided books on tape to expand his vocabulary and understanding of the world, we allowed him to draw beautiful art inspired by what he was listening to, and allowed him to narrate it back to us. He also designed and built structures with construction toys such as Legos while he listened. We found that when he would activate his hands in this manner, his brain retained the vast majority of what he was hearing. He did not begin to “catch on” to reading until about 8 years of age, and by age 9.5 he is easily one year AHEAD of his grade level and now devours books at age 10, with is reading level improving by the month. There is still a spelling delay, but we will keep working at it, exploring different ways to get the words to “stick” and waiting patiently, no labels or failure assigned to him. Glad history is not repeating itself with our son!
If we keep doing what we’re doing as an educational system, I guess we will have to resign ourselves to continuing to produce the huge amount of functionally illiterate young adults that we are. If what we were doing was working, it would be working for more than just a small set of people who develop on the curve that the US public educational system have decided works for THEM. It doesn’t work for many kids, especially boys.
polly | Apr 20, 2010 | Reply
Seven does seem a little late to start. But infancy is way too early if only because they can learn other things like facial expressions, love, sharing –and hey potty training. My rule of thumb is potty training finished first, then reading.
RS Lannan | Apr 21, 2010 | Reply
Oops! Sorry all, I just realized that a whole paragraph of this was left out–the one explaining how the brain processes phonics. I apologize. It is now there, 6th or 7th para. down.
Shaya Dubin | Nov 21, 2011 | Reply
As an educator and an Occupational Therapist who deals with the developmental issues preventing students from succeeding in school I applaud this article and continue to research more like it. The top ten countries in the world as per the PISA exams do not start “formal” academics until age 7. Those that start at 6 provide two years of kindergarten! They start later, pass us and clean our clocks on the way because they respect a child’s right and need to a developmentally appropriate education. What we have in the US now is a genetically biased education system. Children who happen to develop faster (not smarter) will benefit from the education provided them. The rest will be left behind and never given the opportunity to catch up. We outspend Europe in dollars provided to education and we can’t touch them in terms of academic achievement. They begin when all children have an even playing field (they have all reached the age when their brains are ready for formal academics). In addition, their preschool education focuses on socialization, behavior, physical development, gross motor and fine motor skills and every basic foundation strength necessary to be successful in academics. US school system demand evidence based practice from teachers and therapists. Where is the governments hard research, evidenced based and peer reviewed research regarding NCLB and the mandates states must fulfill in order to receive education funding? The emperor is naked and we must stand up and say so. These education mandates make it impossible for the US to compete in the global market place. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We were doing it right 50 years ago and they’re doing it right in Europe. Let’s provide a developmentally appropriate education to our children and watch them all succeed.
Janet | Dec 11, 2011 | Reply
As an elementary school teacher and homeschooling mother, I hate to see what we are doing to our children in America. We push kids way too hard. I have taught k-5 ( kinder a few years) and I hate it over 1st throught 5th because the expectations are so unreal and so unfair to the kids. We want them quietly sitting in their chairs doing worksheets and workbooks. They want to color, play, talk, crawl around and chase eachother, and just have fun. I wish they could do that but I am always frustrated with control issues because I don’t want anyone ( especially parents and principals) to walk in my room seeing kids being kids. We even have to call the kids scholars instead of students. What BS! So, in my mind I know what is right for kids, but I have a job that I need to keep with a different sent of expectations. We have a homework Nazi at my school. This teacher freaks out when a kindergartner goes home with no homework. Nice person but takes kindergarten way too serious. She says she understands they are babies but I don’t think she really does by the look on her face when she sees them doing real kid stuff like running and laughing. It is so silly to make kids walk in straight lines to go to lunch and recess. They expect these kids to be writing sentences and to know about capitalization and punctuation at 5 years old. That is just plain stupid. I would never let the government control my child’s learning. Some kids are academically gifted and can handle kindergarten and first grades, but the average kid can’t. If people could see what we as classroom teachers see, well those of us teachers that are not brainwashed by the system. Government schools are aweful and should just go out of business becuase that is what they are. Your children are nothing but $$ and numbers ( Test Scores). Principals beg kids to come to school when they are sick and promise to send them home after 9am. Why? Because when you keep your child at home the school looses money. It makes me sick that school rather a sick child get out of bed and into the cold just so they don’t looose that child’s daily rate. The school would rather the child get sicker AND pass it around to staff and students ( we take it home to our families too) just so they can get money? We as public educators are forced to push your kids hard so we can have through the roof test scores. People, schools don’t really care about the well being of your child no matter how many times we say in your face we care. THere are some of us like myself, that understand true child development and try to incorporate that into our classrooms, but it is hard. I try to be gentle and understanding with my students because I know they are young, but it is frustrating because of the expectations set outside of my control. We will be starting 1st grade curriculum after Christmas. More proof we are pushing your child. All this pushing is not going to your child a world of good later. People like to compare our education to those in Asian countries. Have you ever noticed how unhappy lots of Asian people look? They also have a high rate of suicide. Too much pushing from family and school. Life can be beautiful with all of its twist and turns but American education is destroying it through our kids and through our wallets. The government is screwing us out of our paychecks to fund such stupidity.