I hope someone can help me with this…my 12 month old reads several words by sight (eg, ball, art, cat, dog, car, tiger, nose, etc). I have been doing YBCR with him since he was 3 months, some LR since he was 6 months, and just started the original Doman flash cards system (based on the book) with him a week ago. I’m super impressed with all that he knows (I’m sure he knows many more words than I’m even aware of), but have encountered a bit of a challenge: he sometimes “guesses” at words when he sees the first letter of a word/a sequence of letters from a word he already knows. For example, I was on Google and he saw the letter g and said “girl” because that’s a word he knows. I said, “This says Google. The word google starts with the letter g like girl.” But he kept saying “girl”. Another example, he saw the word “all” on the laundry detergent and said “ball”. I’m sorry if this is a silly question, but should I be concerned about this? I was thinking maybe I should start teaching him phonics, though I know Doman advises against that at this stage. Has anyone else encountered this issue? If so, did the issue resolve itself once you started teaching phonics? I’d love to hear some other experiences.
I wouldn’t worry. My child suffered the same thing. After patient and persistent correction, she is doing alright. I think you will need to correct your child every time, but you should do it in a manner that do not irritate your child.
I would be excited! Your baby is making connections between what he’s seeing and what he already has in his knowledge bank!! I remember when my son saw ‘eyes’ and said ‘yes’ and I was confused until I realized that the word YES is inside the word eyes! So, I paired the written word with how it sounds spoken and pointed out my eyes and his, and after a session or two, it was resolved. It’s an exciting time. He’s building his vocabulary.
You know how you can see a billboard with something blocking a part of it, but still make out what it says because your brain starts filling in the blanks? Well, it’s for the same reason that you can see a section of a giraffe neck and know that it’s a giraffe - you’re brain is making connections between what it sees and looking for meaning! The brain is going to jump to what it knows before settling on the fact that this is novel and should be categorized as something different. You are his teacher, so if you tell him something is new, then he’ll take note, add it to his expanding vocabulary, and keep learning! Try not to stress this (he’ll pick up on those vibes, too, and think he’s doing something wrong when he’s really taking the next step forward), and keep doing what you’re already doing - introducing him to the fact that this is something different. If it makes you feel any better, even when kids who are five and older and are learning to read through phonics, they still go through a guessing phase. Congrats - you’re baby’s reading!