Early reading and dyslexia prevention

This just came up in another thread, but I thought it deserved its own thread.

I wondered what others thought about Kailing’s belief that many cases of dyslexia may actually be caused by reading too late. (Rather than the other way around, that reading late is caused by dyslexia.) It’s in his book “Native Reading.” His theory is discussed at brillbaby in the discussion of whole language vs. phonics at:

http://www.brillbaby.com/teach-baby/reading-whole-language-phonics.php

The chapter on dyslexia is also one of the sample chapters of “Native Reading” that’s free online:

http://www.nativereading.com/chapter7.html

I think the ideas make a lot of sense, and I was wondering what others thought of it. If it’s true, it means that by teaching our children to read very early (“natively” in Kailing’s lingo) we may actually be lowering their chance of being dyslexic!

I think it absolutely makes sense!

btw, Maddy will be adding a new section to the BrillBaby reading section too about Kailing’s methods, so stay tuned for that.