Learning To Talk Helps A Child To Read

As soon as your child is born into this world, his senses are constantly stimulated by all that is around HIM.  He may not be doing much besides crying, yawning and cooing, but he is constantly surrounded by sounds and people talking.  As his vision starts to improve, he can identify faces as they come close to his face and making noises as they come near. 

His vision begins to develop.  In his infancy, he is already trying to converse, but all he can  produce are baby sounds in answer to adult talk.  Although his senses are ready, Mother Nature prefers to proceed at her own steady pace.  This is when you as the parent, can play your part.  You can sing and talk to your child and he will soon try to mimic you, trying to say those syllables and sounds which sound gibberish to us. He is listening, developing his auditory sense.  Your baby watches and listens as you and others talk, observes that talking is often followed by things happening.

He associates sight and sound and becomes aware that when he ‘talks’ things happen too.  The more interactions there are between you and your child at this stage, the sooner your child will develop his senses.  The thinking and feeling processes are also developing, and with them a curiosity and interest in his surroundings, a thirst for knowledge.  Stimulating this process will enhance his ability to make connections, to assimilate, and later to analyze and give meaning to objects and words and the connections between them.

It is important for you to interact at this stage, to your child’s development.  When he listens to your voice talking or singing, it leaves a deep impression on him.  He wants to talk to you and it shows in his interaction to your actions and the sound you make. The responsive mechanism within him and his eagerness to participate pushes him to communicate with you, through the means you have shown -  talking.

1. In effect, his auditory and visual senses are stimulated.

Nursery rhymes are useful and do play an important role.  Most have an auditory appeal that can be irresistible and can function as an educational tool.  Their strong appeal lies in their rhythm.  The rhyming works stimulate hearing and impart a useful lesson; the ability to distinguish between two words.  Consider the simple nursery rhyme:

Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are

Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky

Try it on your child with a bit of action.  Initially he will enjoy the catchy, lively rhythm.  He will begin to beat time to it and it will make him want to sing along.  He will start singing, unsteady at first, possibly stumbling over the words, and then with increasing confidence.  As he sings, he will develop the ability to make that fine distinction between the rhyming works, star and are, high and sky. The constant repetitive quality characteristic of nursery rhymes gets through to him as well so that simple words and meanings can be learned in an enjoyable way and practiced through repetition. This is how children learn to read, and you baby indeed can read.

Developing the ability to associate things is the first step in learning to read.  The earlier your child learns to talk, the earlier a foundation is laid for reading.  Reading is speech written down or put in another way, talk in print.  When you encourage your child to talk, you are also encouraging him to use a natural human ability, his hearing.  This is the focus of most early childhood development program to teach young children or babies reading.  He says what he hears, which stimulates him.  He wants to learn, more and more, to explore further the new phenomenon he has discovered.