Not to pick on you, but this seems like a completely superficial goal.

As far as I can tell listening comprehension is by far the most important foundational language/reasoning skill.

I would be quite surprised if, all else equal, there were any long-term difference between a kid who learns the alphabet at age 1 and a kid who learns the alphabet at age 4.

On the other hand, the kids whose parents read to them for 1+ hours per day end up way ahead of their peers who aren’t read to.

My parents read to me from a very early age, with the specific goal of getting me reading as early as possible in mind - and it worked. I still remember the “holy shit” moment when I finally decrypted Spot the Dog, which they must have read to me three times a day for months on end. I was reading ladybird books by the time I was 2.5, and Enid Blyton from aged 3 or so. From then on I preferred reading for myself, as it was faster, and I wasn’t reliant on a narrator who got bored after a chapter. I was hooked on stories - tv wasn’t really a thing, as we lived overseas and I was getting confused enough between Cantonese and English as it was - so I read books.

I was ahead throughout school, started university at 16 - I think mostly because my precocious and voracious reading had given me a store of knowledge and connections between concepts that my peers just didn’t have. I went through the entire popular science section at the junior school library in my first year, and then just coasted my way through class, while continuing to read on all subjects. There wasn’t much I was taught in class I didn’t already know.

So, I think it’s very much about early investment in reading - it encourages curiosity, and giving a knowledge hungry child the tools to have an infinite world of deep information available to them forges lifelong habits. I still read a book a week, give or take, and still thirst for more knowledge.

We read books to our daughter at least 1 hour a day since she is maybe 1 year old. Yet she does not know or is even willing to read by herself, as most children of her age, which seems perfectly normal to us. But she already developed a love for books that will certainly be very useful to her for studies and entertainment. This is what we should aim for as parents.

But if parents are super dedicated to the goal of getting their kid to read as early as possible, and spend hours per day on reading drills, it’s probably not impossible for most kids to start independently reading simple books by 2.5 or 3.

I’m not convinced this is a goal particularly worth prioritizing, compared to development of other skills. YMMV.

A lot surely comes down to the personality and preferences of the kid.

On the other hand I am convinced "normal" kids won't read before 5, whatever you do and how hard you try. This makes it even more unworthy to try to reach such goal imho.

I am pretty sure a typical kid (say, at least 75% of all kids) could learn to read simple books by 3 if the parents were fanatical about it and spent hours every day prioritizing the kid learning to read per se, instead of focusing on broader goals. But it doesn’t seem to me like this is worth prioritizing so much, compared to all the other skills small kids should be practicing: gross motor control, strength, and stamina; fine motor skills; getting along with other kids; listening comprehension; logical reasoning; visual observation; understanding the behavior of physical objects; understanding living things; understanding their society and built environment; helping out with family chores; learning to take care of themselves; etc.

Most kids end up learning to read at 5–7 years old instead because the parents spend time doing other things with them, the kids spend time on other activities, and often the parents have other things to do and the kids must entertain themselves. This is totally fine.

My son is 3.5 and will probably be at the stage of reading simple books (say Green Eggs & Ham level) by about 4 or 4.5. I’m sure we could have gotten him to that point by 2.5 or 3 if we made it our top priority. But I’d much rather spend 1–2 hours per day reading a wide variety of enjoyable books to him and inculcating a love of books (not to mention practicing his listening comprehension, vocabulary, and general language skills) than spend that time on phonics drills.

Hyperlexia - the term first crossed my path around eight or so, and struck and strikes me yet me as odd, insofar as it doesn’t define any special characteristic other than early and persistent reading. “Curious” is perhaps a better, if broader, moniker - and I guess if there’s one thing that underpins my parents’ entire pedagogical approach it was the imbuement of wonder into the world - everything was a mystery to be solved. They usually couldn’t give me answers, as they were young and unworldly, but they would answer my questions with a Socratic “what do you think?”, which would usually prompt me into going and reading something that might shed some light, or reasoning out the answer using my extant precepts.

So... while their focus might have been almost myopically on reading, it might not have worked had I been such a willing participant, and exposed to many, many things that made my infantile mind whirl.

Don’t get me wrong, I had crappy parents, like most people - but they got something really right in my early engagement with the printed word, whether advertently or serendipitously. It even meant that when my kid sister came along, while I was seven, that they were off the hook, as I wanted to read to her, and share this incredible world of words with my sibling - and she too was devouring books at an early age, stealing dog-eared Victorian adventure novels from my shelves - and yet her early years were far less experiential than mine, growing up in sheltered British suburbia rather than the neon-lit sweat-drenched riot of crass commercialism and swineherds, both literal and figurative, that was Hong Kong. She likewise was ahead at school, is knowledgeable about the world, has forged a path less trodden - so perhaps the early reading bit remains more important than the direct environment - after all, a good book is as good as a time machine and teleporter, and can take you anywhere.

Thanks for the elaboration. I enjoyed reading about your experience.

ddrdrck_: If you are reading to your daughter for >1 hour every day, she’s going to come out way ahead on language skills whether or not she can read by age 4 or not.

IIRC, there's evidence that (like many things) independent reading is driven by parents modelling the behavior (independent reading), rather than by parents reading to children.

But we didn't push it or anything - my older one was just into the endless alphabet app, and that basic desire to be an expert on something made him point it out - my younger one always to keep up with the older one. I doubt I would have forced them to do it if I wanted it as a goal - I just try to encourage them to get deep on what they're already showing an interest in at this point. And that usually just takes praising the work they put in (and not the results), and answering any questions they have.

(edit) And yeah, there's no long-term differences, as a friend said "every adult knows how to st in a toilet". I say in another comment - advancement is more a random walk than a linear progression, in adulthood as well as toddlers.

I’m just a bit jaded and fed up with a parenting culture / education system that focuses on rushing toward specific arbitrary milestones and memorizing lots of trivia, instead of trying to immerse little humans into a culture where skills and tools are learned through practical use and competence grows slowly over time.

E.g., in a different domain, it isn’t going to especially help anything if a kid takes their first steps at 9 months, and all of those special-purpose baby walker tools are essentially useless, but the kid who has tremendous core strength/stamina because they get lots of exercise crawling all around is going to come out ahead of average even if they don’t start walking until 14 months.

(edit) This is also why I hate standardized testing which places kids is "advanced" and "normal" (implicitly slow) classes - everyone develops at their own rates, but the system implicitly assumes that early advancement rates are indicative of future advancement rates, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

He's now two and when he has an off day because mom and dad are sick or exhausted with the baby, he gets a lot of screen time. And he will on his own take what he's been watching and apply it to his building blocks and other toys. He will spend an hour singing to himself and counting as he plays "Speedy the Number Train" with Duplo.

So much anecdata and so much parental fear. Justifiably so because you only get one chance at this and everyone's afraid of screwing up their kid. But I'm still incredibly skeptical that much of this matters a whole lot.

My own parental advice that I'm following for myself but not trying to push on anyone: above all else, configure my life so that I _always_ have a few hours a day of dedicated time with them. It doesn't matter much what we actually do. And avoid at all costs over-structuring their day or play. Let them lead.

General learning about world around, sure, but these super early mini academics don't matter.

I'm delighted that my kid seems perfectly average. He's ahead in some ways, behind in others. I'm confident it will all be a wash by the time he's older. What matters is spending time with him. Not doing baby brain gymnastics.

Our first daughter is/was a super learner/reader and an all around go-getter that we could hardly slow down. She wanted to do all things and she was usually great at all things, academically or athletic. She went to Westpoint and had much success there.

Her 3 years younger sister didn't seem interested in learning to read at all, except for comic or cartoon books and she hated sports, dance, or music (learning). Mom was worried - what's wrong with her?!? She later came into her own and is as smart and succesful as her sister just in different ways (CS major). Her older sister is always coming to her for advice.

It goes fast so enjoy the ride.

Also, completely side note: you tend to give more weight to random things happening with first kid than with the next ones. Raising more than one atm.

Did not intend to mock, though could keep from adding some color.

I read the comment as traits of the kid ultimately win out over trying to micromanage the details of the kind of stimulation. I think this is right.

"We avoided screen time in the womb and my child could communicate with full Morse code using kicks at 8 months of gestation. Now let me tell you how to parent."

Based on my own experiences and internal states, I would still observe that "screen time" tends to have problems at a very low sensory level, in that even when you're doing something educational, you still have the problem that relatively tiny inputs tend to produce outsized sensory effects compared to what the rest of the world yields. I have to admit I cringe a tiny bit when my kids are playing their mandatory educational games and they correctly add two numbers together, and they get a loud chicken squawk and an animation. That's not how the real world works, you do not get loud sounds and animations simply for adding two numbers together. Even if your forebrain is getting trained in something useful like numbers, you can still be feeding dubious input to the lower-level brain systems.

But, that said, screens are a part of the modern world and they must be learned to be dealt with, and it's still better to have something interactive and productive be the bulk of the time than mere flashy empty calories. I'd even distinguish between good video that you engage with, think about, try to guess what's next, think about what makes it work, and video where it's merely flashy-flash bang-boom entertainment. There's a time and a place for the latter; we all need R&R, but it's not large.

There is a way to recover some value even from the over-stimulative nature of the media, which is that as they grow up, they're going to be under attack by advertisers and journalists (but I repeat myself) who abuse overstimulation as much as they possibly can to convince you to do something that costs you but benefits them by overloading your brain, basically. Some training and practice in resisting such things is helpful.

My point is by dismissing "screen time" wholesale, we create an environment where those types of /quote educational game /unquote are the only option. When people who are serious about education won't take apps/games seriously, they leave a vacuum filled by at best the pure sugar empty calories, and at worst by microtransaction scams. Any app that has a call to action in it gets deleted from the iPad my kids use. It's like saying all movies are trash because the most popular movies are trash.

And this is reflected by the current state of educational games - I know there are good ones because I've seen my kids learn with them, and I believe there could be MORE good ones, but the people who have the empathy and experience to make good ones have already thrown away the proverbial baby with the proverbial bath water

I have seen some that get like a special day at school. There was something they did with Scratch, for instance.

I've thought that part of the reason that all the studies are showing that computers don't seem to help with education are just showing that computers as they are currently used don't help with education. A key element of ... but on a computer! is that if you just take something from the physical world and put it on a computer, you end up with the disadvantages of both compounding. To successfully put something on a computer, you need to work out a way to harness the unique advantages a computer can give you to make up for the inevitable disadvantages it brings. Simply randomizing numbers for addition & multiplication isn't really it.

[1]: http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2916

What's amazing to me is that this is still being discussed, even though a solution to the problem was found decades ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Papert

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindstorms_(book)

I think that you might find Papert's ideas interesting; he based a lot of them on the foundations laid by Piaget:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive...

From what I remember all of the "educational computer games" I played in the early 1990s were more or less this.

There have been some better ones though, over the years. Say Lemmings or World of Goo.

The best is probably something like Logo or Scratch, with some help/guidance from an adult.

What kids play in school though these days (does that make me sound old?) are things like Prodigy (prodigygame.com), featuring decent graphics but mind-numbing content, with constant nags to upgrade to a premium account.

I'd like to add one more. They draw a comparison between "a preschooler who is often read to by a caregiver" and "a preschooler who likely spends an average of two hours a day playing on screens".

I'm sure many kids correspond to both descriptions.

I honestly find this hard to believe. Maybe you have one special kid that knows the alphabet before one. But two??

The US Department of Education says [0] by age 3-4 start working simple things, like I love you.

[0]: https://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/reader/part9.html

Also, the US Dept of Education guidelines are really like "if this isn't happening by this age, then there's a problem" - in terms of brains, kids develop at vastly different speeds - they can jump ahead and then fall behind - I personally didn't get math until a very late age thanks to a good teacher, thank god standardized testing wasn't the norm or else I would have been put on the "slow track". My older son is advanced in some ways, but way behind in others.

There is no blueprint for what kids should know when, and advancement is closer to a random walk than a linear progression. (how the physical body develops, which bounds stuff like speaking, writing, etc is pretty linear though)

My 2 year old is basically 3 - his birthday is in Feb, close enough that calling him 2-year-old is bending the truth, but not technically breaking it :)

The alphabet thing is totally true - Largely due to Endless Alphabet, which is a rare really well designed learning app - but I will say that learning what sounds go with what alphabet letters is a specific type of education that really plays to the screen strengths and isn't as transferable to other types of education. The fact that I don't have another example like that one to demonstrate the power of educational apps shows that this might be exception rather than the rule.

On Endless Alphabet, when you drag the letters around (something kids get right away) it repeats the letter pronunciation again and again in different ways, and it still cracks them up. Then we finish dragging them, you get treated to a little funny animated video that are really well made. So they could play with that for hours, and knew all the pronunciations from there, and the order from the song (well the song is basically how I still know it). We'd test them when we pass signs on the street/sidewalk, and they did struggle, but both would get all the letters before they turned 1.

You wouldn't believe how badly most kids apps are made, even the big ones like hooked on phonics. Things like supporting multi-touch are essential since they don't have great motor skills, and not nailing that can be really confusing and frustrating for a child, who tends to think everything is because they can't do it, not because the app didn't implement it well. And the rest of the "Endless X" apps teaching other skills (maths, music) don't work as well as Endless Alphabet, I think it works exceedingly well for the specific memorization task of matching sounds to icons.

Wouldn't we expect the performances of siblings to be correlated?

I'm happy to see this. They have their own projects and they are learning lots of random real-world skills to move those projects forward. They are having "hard fun" in Seymour Papert's terms.

I'm still maintaining their configuration.nix for now though...

I related elsewhere how my parents, long since passed away, read to me from physical books and encouraged my education.

I don't have children, but I think you have hit the nail on the head; ultimately everything is just a tool - the important part is the parents interacting with their child's education, using the tools they have available.

I have no doubt that had my mother had access to an ipad or whatever, that she would have used that as well to teach and encourage my learning. As it was, the only other media besides books was television - and so PBS and "Sesame Street" was on, and she'd watch it with me.

But other shows she liked were also educational to an extent - such as game shows; Price is Right can teach a lot of things about money and counting, and Wheel of Fortune can teach words and letters. But it wasn't just plopping me down in front of the TV - she was there with me, asking me questions, teaching me how to figure out things on my own.

Which is what you are also doing with your children, but using the tools that are available today; but I think even if you didn't have access to those tools, you'd still find a way to interact and teach your children, and that's the best thing they could ever have.

They'll also remember it for life.

Make your own entertainment/learning tools, it’s part of the fun.

So even though you may think the educational aspect as well as bring present is good enough, you’re still training your kids to go straight to screens instead of putting in effort or just being bored.

Finding things to do, being creative is a part of being a kid, and at that age, IMO, you’re doing a huge disservice to them.

I wonder what apps did you use?

Here are the apps I've whitelisted on my 3 year old's iPad. I don't like having video on there because I found passive video consumption dominates all other activities. I've found with a hand-picked set of apps, she naturally self-limits her screen time.

- Metamorphabet. An alphabet toy with high production values. https://metamorphabet.com/

- Endless Alphabet. Discussed elsewhere in this thread. https://www.originatorkids.com/?p=564

- Flow Free. A simple puzzle game kids seem to love. Lots of levels. Make sure to remove the ads. https://www.bigduckgames.com/flowfree

- Divide by Sheep. Actually a pretty difficult game, but for some reason she loves it. https://www.tinybuild.com/dividebysheep.

- Busy Shapes. Simple put the shape in the hole game. Recently has been crashing, though. https://montessori.edokiacademy.com/en/our-games/discovery/b...

- Crazy Gears. A puzzle game that builds intuition about mechanics. See also Busy Water by the same developer. https://montessori.edokiacademy.com/en/our-games/discovery/c...

- Khan Academy Kids. A pretty large library of educational content that nevertheless is engaging enough to compete with the other apps she has access to. Does have a few videos though. https://www.khanacademy.org/kids

In a world where most adults of the current generation spend almost more time in front of the screen than away from it, one would indeed think that "screen time" means nothing in and of itself.

I think we also completely fail in every way to measure the benefit — because adaption, evolution tells us one thing: while there are "better" and "worse" paths, it's only ever retrospectively; the corrolary is that it's almost impossible to actually predict evolution, to "design" it — it's sci-fi, for now. So I've always been wary of applied fields faced with a paradigm change, in history: they always tend to lag a lot, even more so than people outside the field — perhaps because they're so deep in it that they can't see what's obvious to a bystander, idk.

Note that it's healthy, in science — skepticism is what makes us great, in a way, because we don't condone "intuition" as "theory" unlike any other endeavor of the human mind. But science is not up to predict individual let alone social evolution, a far, far cry from it that's even on the side of "maybe's" in some abstract idealistic future.

Right now, we're left with trying to make the best out of what we've got to prepare kids for a future we can't see ourselves, and we probably take a cue or two for our own life in that process — I'll let you be the judge of whether parenting is a learning experience...

My intuition, deep down, is that a reasonable¹ dose of exposure to technological tools is very desirable in developing one's fluency with said tech; and may constitute one of these hard to measure but clearly obvious — you "know it when you see it" — difference between "nerds" or "geeks" and the "computer illiterate" (which, I observe, are less but still many in the millenials generation compared to X and boomers, contrary to my initial intuition).

Generally, I think one should trust each step of the way their "gut feeling" about the development of their children, and adjust accordingly, remain in a "safe zone", sane defaults when in doubt. It's also been shown to a convincing extent that "just trying hard, for real" and "showing up, being there" and being very human in simply trying to communicate with children, is as sure as we have of a recipe for success — because it's bound to be very relevant, very ad hoc to your own situation, and thus that of your children. Go against the grain if it makes them better if your eyes and in their experience of life, just don't ignore hard facts from other parents as well.

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¹ By "reasonable" I mean not impairing other development; but it's also "reasonable" to envision that some skills are less useful nowadays than 50 or 500 years ago (despite the brain's ability for them, and our ability to measure abstractly relevant "improvements" or "impairments" here or there). Conversely that some are more useful, but we may not yet test for these.