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Rodney · 08-21-2003, 12:39 PM

I'm no parent, but I've worked in schools and and currently in a credential program. I've worked mostly with minority kids, many of them immigrants.

Now I've seen kids whose parents are dirt-poor and don't speak English well and just got here do really well, and I've seen kids whose parents were born here and who speak English as a first language do terribly.

It really comes down to a couple of things. First, stimulating the child. Spending a lot of time with him (I'll say hiim), talking with him, explaining things to him, teaching him things, doing things with him, just being a parent. The more you interact with him, the more developed his verbal skills (and his mental skills in general, will become).

Second -- it's really the same thing -- background knowledge. The more you work with the kid, the bigger his spoken vocabulary is going to be before he begins to read. It's a lot easily to learn to read when you already know the vocabulary verbally. It's a lot easier to learn to write when you already know how to make a good sentence verbally.

Also, read with him a lot. He'll learn how a book works (a lot of first-graders don't know), he'll learn to related written words to spoken words (kids tend to think that written words are from some special hard language, and the means of communicating in that language are different), and he'll get a wide variety of concepts under his belt that will help him in school. And once again, you'll be there, stimulating him with conversation and helping him explore the new concepts. That's just not going to happen if you're too tired to do this and he spends most of his time in front of the TV and Playstation.

If you do this, you're doing a lot. The kid will turn out great. No need to take extraordinary measures; in this day and age, with so many demands on families, the above measures -are- extraordinary for a lot of people.

08-21-2003, 12:39 PM	#2 (permalink)
Rodney Observant Ruminant Location: Rich Wannabe Hippie Town	I'm no parent, but I've worked in schools and and currently in a credential program. I've worked mostly with minority kids, many of them immigrants. Now I've seen kids whose parents are dirt-poor and don't speak English well and just got here do really well, and I've seen kids whose parents were born here and who speak English as a first language do terribly. It really comes down to a couple of things. First, stimulating the child. Spending a lot of time with him (I'll say hiim), talking with him, explaining things to him, teaching him things, doing things with him, just being a parent. The more you interact with him, the more developed his verbal skills (and his mental skills in general, will become). Second -- it's really the same thing -- background knowledge. The more you work with the kid, the bigger his spoken vocabulary is going to be before he begins to read. It's a lot easily to learn to read when you already know the vocabulary verbally. It's a lot easier to learn to write when you already know how to make a good sentence verbally. Also, read with him a lot. He'll learn how a book works (a lot of first-graders don't know), he'll learn to related written words to spoken words (kids tend to think that written words are from some special hard language, and the means of communicating in that language are different), and he'll get a wide variety of concepts under his belt that will help him in school. And once again, you'll be there, stimulating him with conversation and helping him explore the new concepts. That's just not going to happen if you're too tired to do this and he spends most of his time in front of the TV and Playstation. If you do this, you're doing a lot. The kid will turn out great. No need to take extraordinary measures; in this day and age, with so many demands on families, the above measures -are- extraordinary for a lot of people.