Parents do not draw up lesson plans to teach kids our language. They don't "teach" at all, they just talk to kids, and the more they talk, the more the children learn.
We take for granted the fact that children learn verbal language through hearing patterns of sound, yet stay clear of helping them learn language visually through patterns written down (letters).
From almost the first days of life, an infant's very fine eye for detail is shown by the ability to discriminate the mother's face from other faces.
Differences between faces are slight, yet infants can perceive them. They can in the same way discriminate between different letters. But they won't have a clue what those squiggles mean unless someone shows them and tells them.
We point out everything to children. "Look, there's a plane... a horse... here's your car seat..." and on and on.
We show them pictures in books and talk about them, but we never show them letters.
How can they learn if we never point them out?
It's not a question of "teaching" them. We should no more teach children written language than we teach them to understand spoken language or teach them what a cat is. Draw their attention, point, identify, name.
My daughter learned her first letters inadvertently under adverse circumstances. She was screaming at the time. I grabbed the nearest item to distract her, which happened to be a tin of OAK marmalade. "Look," I cried, pointing to the big letters, "There's an 'O'. And an 'A' and, oh look, there's a 'K'".
She took one of those deep shuddering breaths that babies do, looked again at the tin, and stopped screaming.
The next day with the marmalade tin nearby she touched the O and said, "O". I couldn't believe it.
By the age of 2, four months later, she could name all the letters wherever she saw them, at a bus stop, in her books, in a newspaper, on cereal packets.
I just kept drawing her attention to letters and naming them, as I would point out a cat or a bird or a tree. This was all just part of life, no lesson times, no vocabulary lists, no planning. "There's a red car". "There's a B".
Later my son learned letters the same way, as did my granddaughter, years later. These are ordinary kids, with no special abilities.
It's a small step for a child to learn that letters make sounds - s, b, k, f, m, n, l, p and so on.
There are exceptions to this, but if a child can learn to distinguish the tiny differences between, say, b and d, she is quite capable of understanding that the same letter can have two different sounds such as g and c.
From there, children can recognise combinations -th, sh, ph.
Hundreds of words are phonetic and children can soon read them.
From then on, it's a fun puzzle in realising that letters make words that tell a story.
The vast sums spent on research into reading would be better spent teaching parents the importance of showing children letters.
It doesn't take a PhD to say to a child, "Hey look at that big S. Can you find an S in your
book?". We would say the same about a cat - "Look there's a cat. Can you find a cat in your book?"
It's time we got over our fear of reading and gave our children the chance to learn when they are most eager and most able. They will learn and they will love it.
• Aucklander Susan Grimsdell writes about current issues.
