Should You Teach Your Kid the ABCs?

Getting ahead vs. child-led

My two-year-old son’s best buddy can recite the alphabet forwards and backwards, spell his name, and identify every letter. He can count to ten in English and Spanish. Clearly we are falling behind.

In the United States, pressure to pass the third grade literacy test leads to increased expectations in the first years of school, with some calling kindergarten “the new first grade.” The common core standards for literacy in kindergarten include:

• Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
• Write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds (phonemes).
• Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships.

And ambitions for toddler learning seem to be increasing in turn.

Really though. Do toddlers need to know the ABCs? Learning the alphabet sure seems like an exercise in rote memorization.

What’s the point in focusing on these 26 characters and their arbitrary order, with kids too young to really put the pieces together? Knowing letters and sounds does of course give kids the building blocks to spot patterns and start to understand the concepts of written language. But is it age appropriate?

Waldorf schools famously don’t teach kids to read until they’re seven. While the standard approach to reading is to teach letters and phonics early, words and simple sentences in kindergarten, then build to increasingly complex ideas, Waldorf Schools teach reading in the opposite sequence — linking to specific developmental milestones. In kindergarten, when kids have more sophisticated auditory skills than visual skills, Waldorf starts with oral storytelling that focuses on imagination, words and rhythm. In first or second grade, when kids are more skilled at symbol recognition and their eye muscles can track across a page, they learn letters and phonics, words and sentences. The philosophy: because kids engage their imaginations early, and they’re not pushed to learn skills before they have the capabilities to fully use them, they develop a greater love for reading. And studies have shown that Waldorf kids catch up with their early-reading peers quickly.

Others prefer to wait on the ABCs too. Notably, educational leaders in Sweden and Finland (some of the best-performing in the world) don’t start formal instruction at all until the age of six or seven. The early education researcher Lilian Katz cautions, “It can be seriously damaging for children who see themselves as inept at reading too early.”

My take: I don’t think the ABCs are necessary for toddlers. But if they show an interest, then of course we should support them.

It’s amazing how much kids absorb when they follow their natural curiosity.

As parents of a two-year-old, my partner and I have chosen to inspire with language rather than teach specific skills. We use big words and try to speak to our toddler like an adult. We read books together all the time. There’s a poster of the alphabet on the wall, and an alphabet puzzle… but we don’t push it.

And then our son came home at a year and a half demanding that we sing “LMNOP” over and over again, and we did. (He learned the song in a day.) When he took an interest in the words printed on his snack bowl, my mom taught him to read his first word: “Go. G-O.” As long as he’s at the helm, I think we’re in good hands.