Writing Before Reading

Teaching your child to read requires patience, perseverance, and much effort. But it is very rewarding if your child can read at a much earlier stage than other kids. I began teaching my daughter to read when she was only a few months old, and she could read at the age of three (an average child in the United States begins to read at the age of five or six).

Teaching a child to read comes in many stages, and the last stage prior to reading is the writing stage.

Writing, involving the use of voluntary muscles, is a physical skill that improves with more practice and encouragement from parents. At the end of the second year or the beginning of the third year, wrist and finger movement develops, and by the middle or the end of the third year, your child may have mastered the skill of holding a pencil between finger and thumb. Some children can draw crude pictures of human figures; others may begin to copy their own names.

To help your child achieve a satisfactory running hand is a more realistic goal than to train him or her to become  calligrapher. Good handwriting, however, should be duly encouraged: after all, attractive handwriting is often a joy to behold as well as a pleasure to produce. Moreover, an efficient mastery of handwriting would enable subsequent fluent written communication. It is important that there should be a sensible and consistent policy for the teaching of handwriting.

Teach and encourage your child to do the following to improve his or her motor skills: