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[This is the article I have written about my theories. I hope you enjoy it]
The Emergence of Superman?
Recent discoveries in brain research are revealing the enormous amount of brain development that takes place from birth to age three as well as the important role that the caregiver has in using this time for their young child's optimal development.
I made a remarkable discovery following the birth of my third child. I got this idea that I would show her ABC cards while giving the letter's sound/sounds. At the time I thought I was just going to give her a little jumpstart on reading by doing that. The outcome of my idea turned out to be way beyond anything I had imagined and far beyond any little jump start.
I will tell my story of this remarkable discovery, suggest some implications about this discovery followed by some possible historical examples, and finally conclude with what I hope are some wise words.
The Discovery
Beginning about the fourth month of my third child, Victoria's life, I began to show her ABC cards while giving their phonetic sounds. Since I had learned phonics for myself some years earlier when I taught my older two children to read at the usual age of five, this wasn't the sometimes superficial phonics that many children get but the whole kit and caboodle with the entire gamut of sounds for each letter. Some letters have two sounds, some of the vowels have three sounds, and the 'y' has a whooping four sounds since it is both a vowel and a consonant.
By the time she had turned two there was some indications of the success of what I still regarded then as a little jumpstart. One day she began to walk around the house reading the word 'stop' everywhere she could find it, like on the VCR, the microwave, stereo, etc. I had never taught or pointed that word out to her, but it is a word she saw frequently on stop signs on the streets, so I didn't think that much about it. Another thing she would do is pick out letters in places I would never have thought of. For example, if crayons were randomly scattered on the table and might be in the shape of one of the letters, she would point it out. Every once in a while she would actually spontaneously read a word. The one I really remember occurred when she was four years old. I had been teaching her a little piano with a piano book having the song 'Little White Pony' in it. I had not shown her or taught her this piece. She was just flipping through the pages one day and said Mommy teach me 'Little', 'White', she paused and then said 'Pony'. The reason this was so significant was that I knew she was familiar with the words little and white from books she had, but I knew she had never seen the word pony. There was a picture of a horse on the page but she didn't say horse, she said 'Pony'. Her mind had put that together all by itself from the exposure she had to the phonic sounds.
It was about this time that I decided it was time to start teaching her a little. I looked around at different kindergarten material and they all seemed too easy. I looked at first grade material but hesitated a long time before buying. I thought it would be way too hard. Then I just shrugged my shoulders and thought, what the heck we will just have a little fun together, and I bought the material. There was a first grade reader in the material; The first page had somewhere between ten to twenty words in a nice little story. Although it was very simple, I must emphasize that I had never attempted at anytime to show her how to read. I had only shown her ABC cards giving the phonic sounds. After reading the page to her once, I handed her the book. She read it right back with no mistakes. This was probably a good five or six simple sentences, but I thought she might just have an excellent memory. I turned the page, which had the same words in it but in different sentences and in a different order. She read it flawlessly. She was reading! I never taught her. As her reading vocabulary increased she would read words she had never seen before by determining them from the context clues. It was so exciting for me to watch her do that. When she came to a word she didn't know, I would not immediately give it to her. She would hesitate, it was almost as if I could see the wheels turning in her brain, and most every time, she would come out with the correct word without my help.
The Implication
My theories have been long in the formulating which I have drawn from my own background of a Master's Degree in psychology with an emphasis in learning theories. I took graduate courses in subjects such as child development, physiological psychology, and particularly learning theories itself. Adding to that was my experience in teaching my older two children to read. I had not kept up with my field very closely but close enough. There were exciting discoveries being made in the areas of language development and brain research. With the personal discoveries made in regards to my third child I began to put two and two together.
One - Expose the child during the first three years of life while their brains are forming at such a rapid rate and
Two - Expose them to the most elemental ingredient in the learning process of any particular area of knowledge. In my case it was phonics, the most basic element in the learning to read process.
Plus Two - Don't teach the adult level of a subject but only the step one and two above and let the child develop their own knowledge from that.
Equals Four - The results are remarkable abilities and in a sense Super Human abilities, at least compared to what we are today, not what we could have always become had we only known how.
Superman Continued _________________________________________________________________________
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