children starting to read in home education

While many parents believe in the theory of child-led or interest-centred 'autonomous' learning (or 'unschooling'), and this often works well in home education, it can be rather worrying if a child does not learn to read naturally. We all probably know of children who learned to read painlessly at the age of two or three, and it's easy to feel we must be doing something wrong if our child does not read by the time he is eight or nine. Even worse, he might show no interest in learning to read, and we start to wonder if we're raising an illiterate child.

Part of the problem is that children don't learn to read entirely 'naturally'. Give your toddler a few books without any assistance, and he's more likely to eat them than to sit down and ask you how to decode the strange printed squiggles. Some children might be aware of words in everyday life, and ask you what road signs or leaflets say, while others may ignore them completely. Just like some children may be fascinated by stars, or the workings of a washing machine, while others simply accept them, or barely notice them. The difference is that we can get by as adults without knowing the names of constellations, or the innards of a washing machine, but we all need to read.

Reading by osmosis

Can reading be learned as easily as - say - speaking?

Yes, for some children whose minds work that way. But even then, there has to be some parental input. A child will not learn to speak unless other people talk to him! Moreover, when our babies start making babbling noises, we 'interpret' them, giving instant feedback and - later on - correction. Not in a strict way, of course: but when your two-year-old says excitely that he saw 'three mouses' at his friend's house, you smile and say something like, 'Wow, what fun! Does your friend keep his three mice in a cage?' Your child hears your use of 'mice' and subconsciously - sooner or later - absorbs it as the correct plural of 'mouse'. His own use of 'mouses' shows how much grammar and understanding he has already taken in, without any formal teaching, so that he can make a plural which you recognise as such, and which is entirely logical, without ever having heard it himself.

Similarly, when you read to your child regularly, he may be fascinated by words, and start asking you what they say - or making his own attempt at reading them. For a young child, simply answering their questions is sufficient. You don't need to talk about sounds or phonics when a child asks what a word 'says' - if he has the ability to read at a young age, he will almost certainly also have the ability to build up his own internal phonics system, just like he built up his own internal grammatical system for spoken language.

He might like you to run your finger along the words as you read, so that he can make the connections as he hears you reading, and for some children this is enough: a few more questions, a bit of playing around with words and letters (such as magnetic fridge letters) and he will be reading. He may not have the ability to sound out words in traditional style - he may not even 'hear' how words work if he is such a visually-orientated child - but some children can and do learn to read this way, and tend to become rapid and fluent readers by the time they're five or six.

Is this a good thing? Should parents try and 'push' their children into reading at a young age by asking leading questions?

I don't think so. If a child has this kind of mind, he will learn to read anyway, so long as you provide the basic resources - picture books with simple words, the example of older chilren and adults reading for enjoyment, stories read aloud several times a day, and a natural discussion of written words in everyday life.

But children who read at a very young age may miss out on other activities, and some experts believe it can have a bad effect on eyesight. You can't stop a child who wants to learn to read when he's two or three, but there's no need to encourage or push a small child into recognising words or letters. By the time children are teenagers, it makes no difference at what age they learned to read; however an early-reading child may have poorer co-ordination or motor skills.

Teaching reading - phonics

On the other hand, a child who is not determined to read at a young age will probably need more 'teaching'. Just as spoken languages can most easily be learned intuitively before the age of about six, so reading is unlikely to be learned in this painless way once the child is past the age of five or six. For many children, reading is a form of decoding rather than instant word recognition. They need to build up to a word gradually, rather than spotting patterns from known words and applying them elsewhere.

There are many methods of teaching phonics; a quick search of any bookshop will discover a wealth of material. What appeals to one child may bore another, so make sure you take your child's interests into account if you want to use a course of some sort. However it's not necessary to use a formal course. Assuming you can read yourself, you can help your child learn to read. Some courses offer 'quick' or 'guaranteed' lessons, but there's no hurry. It really doesn't matter how long it takes your child, so long as he is enjoying the process and wants to read.

Let's assume your child is about five or six, and has expressed an interest in reading but is not continually asking you 'What does that word say?' or picking up books to attempt reading them. It's probably best to start with individual letters and their sounds. Magnetic fridge letters are ideal for this, as they're solid and colourful. Use lower-case letters to start with, and don't worry about memories of chanting the alphabet. Time for that when your child is ready to use a dictionary.

It's probably best to start with something familiar, such as your child's name (if it's a simple one) or words like 'Dad' or 'cat'. Explain that each of the letters has a sound attached, and tell him what they are. There's some controversy over whether to use the letter names ('Ay', 'bee', 'see') or sounds ('aa', 'buh', 'cuh') - either seems to work, so long as the emphasis is on the words rather than the individual sounds. The 'Letterland' scheme is widely used, giving letters not just memorable names ('Annie Apple', 'Bouncing Ben', 'Clever Cat' etc) but personalities, and placing them in stories to encourage a child's interest.

Contrasting 'cat' with 'mat' and 'bat' (etc) can show the pattern alongside the sounds. It all depends on your child's interest levels: if they want to play games with letters, follow the lead. Once they realise that they can make 'invented' words (such as 'jat' or 'zat') and pronounce them correctly, they've grasped the basic idea of how words work. On the other hand, if they get bored after a minute or two of talking about sounds and words, they're probably not yet ready to learn much in the way of phonics.

All being well, a child introduced to words this way will start to ask questions and you'll be able to explain phonic blends (like 'fl' and 'br') or digraphs (such as 'sh' and 'ch') naturally when they occur. It's a good idea to practise some writing alongside reading, but it doesn't have to be formal: tracing letters in sand, or painting huge letters in bright colours will give your child the feel for letter shapes much better than lined paper and a pencil.

Whole word recognition

At the same time, it's important to help your child recognise some standard and common words that don't fit into regular phonic patterns. English is not an entirely phonic language, so simply learning letter sounds and rules will not enable a child to read. There are far too many exceptions! Just consider the difference sounds made by the words cough, bough, and rough, for instance ('coff', 'bow', 'ruff').

At a simpler level, common words like 'What' or 'who' need to be taught as whole words - 'what' does not rhyme with 'cat', and while 'who' rhymes with 'do', the equally common word 'go' is not said like 'goo'! Another much-loved and often used system is that of Ladybird keywords. This uses the principle that since there are 100 commonly-used words which form around half of everything we read, it's best for children to learn to recognise those words early on. Their reading books in various series are graded according to the number of words introduced, so that a beginning reader can experience success quickly, thus providing some motivation to learn a few more words.

There are many other reading schemes used by schools and home educators, using one or other of the two broad principles - phonics or word recognition - or, ideally, a combination of the two. As a home educating parent you have a much easier task than a teacher in a class of 30 or more children: you can read with your child whenever he is interested, and know instinctively when he has grasped something new, or when he's still struggling. There's no pressure to meet government targets, and no need for your child to read in order to learn other subjects, since you can read to him, or discuss what he's learning verbally. Early reading in schools is necessary so that the teacher can give children clsasroom assignments rather than working individually with each of them, but at home it doesn't matter.

What about an older child?

Here's where doubt about home education, or comparison with other children can be quite a threat. If your child is ten and hasn't yet started reading, it's easy to feel that you've let him down. If your child has reached this age without any interest in reading, it's best to discuss with him the advantages of being able to read. Perhaps he worries that you might stop reading to him, or is feeling that he must be stupid if he can't read. Or perhaps he's too busy learning and doing other things and isn't the kind of child who's going to enjoy reading.

Whatever the reason, reading is a vital skill. A child of ten or older should easily be able to understand that, and should also be able to discuss what to do about it - what kind of books he would like to read, how quickly he'd like to be able to do so, what worries he might have. An advantage of working with an older child is that his logical abilities will be much better developed than those of a younger child, so the idea of putting phonics together should come easily. You may even find that he's already grasped many of the principles without knowing it.

One problem with an older child starting to read is that many 'easy-read' books are intended for five-year-olds, and are of little interest to children approaching puberty. Still, this is something which has been addressed in recent years: your library or bookshops should be able to provide suitable material that won't make an older child feel bored or humiliated, with stories to interest him at a level he can read fairly soon.

I've heard of children who didn't start reading at all until they were ten or eleven, and by the time they were twelve were reading at adult level. It's never too late, and if your child is happy not to read until this stage, there's no reason to worry. If a child of this age adamantly doesn't want to read, you may need to dig a little to find out if he's been taunted about his lack of skill by other children, or perhaps tried to read something advanced and then decided it was 'too difficult'.

Reading difficulties

While most children learn to read, sooner or later, if given suitable opportunities and encouragement, there are some who suffer from dyslexia, literally 'word blindness', meaning that they see letters and words oriented in different ways, and have no way of recognising them. There is much debate over how this happens - whether it's something genetic, or from too early introduction to reading, or too much emphasis on phonics, or too little... nobody is entirely certain.

Dyslexic children often have other excellent gifts (such as an ability to think rapidly in three dimensions, making them excellent at Lego building and architecture) and tend to be highly intelligent. If your child has good verbal skills, but seems unable to read despite wanting to do so, and is at least eight or nine, then it may be worth having him tested for dyslexia. There are some excellent resources available to help dyslexic children: from a different method of phonic learning through to coloured acetate glasses which apparently stop the words from jumping around on the page.

However if your child is younger than eight, it may be that he's not yet ready to learn to read. Just as some young children are unable to hop, or to sing in tune, or to tie shoe-laces, so some young children are not able to read. Patience, and encouragement are all that's needed, and eventually the skills will be acquired.

No single method

I once chatted to a wise and experienced Reception class teacher. She said that in all her years of teaching she had never come across two children who learned to read in exactly the same way. She said that some grasp everything very quickly, and are reading fluently by the end of the year. Some have no interest at all, and are still struggling with basic sounds by the time they go into Year One. And the majority have some variation on the mid-ground, learning sometimes by leaps, sometimes by plateaux, sometimes by repetition, sometimes by new books to inspire them.

She assigned reading books based on the child's learning style, ability and interests, and heard each child privately at least once a week, preferably more. Most of the reading, she acknowledged, was learned at home when the parents read with and to the child daily, and talked about words and language.