On my last birthday, I chose a word of the year for my personal “new year”: Deliberate.
My work is all about sharing evidence-based information on how parents and families can set kids up for success in reading, school, and life. And in furthering that mission this year, I’ve been thinking a lot about how my word of the year may just be the parenting superpower any one of us can leverage to help our kids succeed.
In the whirlwind of parenting, it is so easy to fall into a “reactive” mode—responding to the loudest cry, the messiest spill, or the tightest deadline. But being deliberate is about creating a sacred pause. It’s making the choice to stop, breathe, and consciously decide how we want to show up for our children.
When it comes to raising thriving readers, being deliberate changes everything. It turns “routine” into “opportunity.”
Here are a few examples of how a deliberate mindset can transform the different seasons of raising a child—so we can help our kids succeed and thrive as readers and through all the opportunities that opens up:
1. Deliberate Conversation (The Baby Years)
Literacy doesn’t start with a book; it starts with your voice. Even in utero, babies are listening to the sounds of your language.
- The “back-and-forth”: Research shows that conversation exchanges between a parent and a baby build the brain foundations for vocabulary and reading later on. Every time you respond to your child, you’re building their brain for success.
- The deliberate choice: Instead of just talking at your baby, narrate your day and interact with them deliberately. Respond to their babbles and coos as if they’re really communicating. Before you know it, they will be.
2. Deliberate Observation (The Preschool Years)
Sometimes we get anxious about milestones because we’re comparing our kids to aspirational trends. Being deliberate means looking at the child in front of you and finding out what they actually need—now—to take their personal next step.
- The GPS Method: When you have a concern, use my GPS framework: Guidance (check actual standards for their age), Personal observation (pay attention and make notes), and Specialists (talk to a pediatrician, teacher, or other expert).
- The deliberate choice: Trust your gut. If you feel a gap exists, don’t wait for it to become a crisis. Early intervention is the most deliberate act of love you can provide. Sometimes, that means seeking out evaluation or just some extra support.
3. Deliberate Teaching (Everyday Life)
We often think teaching reading requires a desk and a curriculum, but the most powerful lessons can happen in the “in-between” moments.
- Pattern interrupts: Use a trip to the grocery store or a drive to soccer practice to play with sounds, point out letters, or talk about the meaning (or spelling) of a word.
- The deliberate choice: Spend a few minutes during downtime—at the bus stop, over breakfast, or in the dentist’s waiting room—to teach your child something they don’t know about language. Point out letters on cereal boxes, t-shirts, or street signs. Draw their attention to a new word or a strange spelling. Talk about the meaning of a word you hear or discuss more complicated ideas. Let the lessons grow with the child.
4. Deliberate Writing (The School Years)
As our kids grow as readers, they can start expressing themselves as writers, too.
- Models for writing: Reading actually teaches us how to write. When kids read a variety of stories, they learn the structures and styles they can use in their own work.
- The deliberate choice: Encourage your child to set pen to paper and take the time to model doing the same. Write a thank you note to their teacher or a colleague, then suggest they do the same. Pen a letter to a senior citizen together. Allow a few extra minutes before grocery shopping and invite your child to help you write the shopping list. You might just wind up with a cute keepsake into the bargain.
As you raise your child, I invite you to join me in being deliberate. It isn’t about working harder or doing more. We’re all stretched thin enough.
Instead, it’s about paying attention, making intentional choices, and taking the small but deliberate actions that make a big difference in setting up our kids to fulfill their own version of success.
Host a Virtual Book Club
Want to dig deeper into early literacy and family literacy? rnrnConsider hosting a virtual book club where we explore these ideas together.rnrn
Learn more.
Many parents don’t read to their newborns, assuming an infant won’t “get it” just yet. But what if I told you the best time to start reading really is on day one?
Early book-sharing isn’t about your little bundle understanding the words or the plot. It’s about providing a rich language experience through the rhythm of your voice and the bonding that happens over a book.
This builds your baby’s brain in ways that affect their reading and learning for the rest of their life. At the same time, it builds a beautiful habit that will strengthen their brain and your bond for years to come.
If you want to know more about exactly why reading to babies is so important, check out my article, The Three Best Reasons to Read Aloud to Babies. If you’re already sold, here are three simple, impactful tips for making story time successful with infants—and getting the maximum effect in building their growing brains.
Make It a Conversation, Not a Monologue
Reading to your baby (or child of any age) shouldn’t be a one-way street. The real brain-building magic happens in the space between the words. Even before your baby can talk, use books as a medium for back-and-forth engagement, creating a shared experience and drawing them in.
- Watch their gaze: Notice what catches your baby’s eye on the page and talk about that. If they look at a picture of a baby, you can say, “Yes, that’s a baby! A baby like you!” If they reach out towards the cover, you might say, “That’s the book cover. It feels smooth, doesn’t it?”
- Embrace the babble: When your baby coos or babbles back at you, treat it as a response. These small “conversations” are literally forging the critical brain architecture your child will use for the rest of their life.
- Leave space: Pause frequently to give your baby room to express themselves and play around with the sounds of language. This also means leaving room for them to communicate that they’re tired or bored. It’s okay to move on when they’re ready. With newborns, a few moments of reading goes a long way.
Prioritize Connection Over Distraction
In our digital age, it’s tempting to reach for a tablet or a “literacy app” for a quick fix, but a screen simply can’t replace a parent.
The evidence says that babies don’t learn anything from screens, not even basic language. Technology lacks the human, interactive, responsive element that newborns and toddlers need to learn and thrive.
When you hold a physical book, you can monitor your child’s reactions—watching their gaze and feeling their energy—and tailor the story to them in a way an app never could. You can call an object by the name your family uses if it’s different from the word on the page, or you can bring in personal context. For example, you could interject, “Look at the cat! It looks like Fluffy.”
It’s not always easy, but any time you ditch your own screen and focus on your baby is gold for their development.
Keep It Simple
Most of all, don’t worry about getting from the first page to the last. Especially with newborns, it is perfectly fine if they just want to touch the pages, chew on the corners, or even throw the book. The goal is to build a habit of sharing language, books, and excitement.
Over time, you can extend story time little by little. The main thing is to make story time enjoyable—for both of you—and keep it up, even if it’s just minutes a day.
Your Mission: Today, find five minutes to sit with your baby and a book. Don’t just read the words—read your baby. Follow their lead, enjoy the snuggles, and know that you are laying the foundation for a lifetime of learning.
Host a Virtual Book Club
Want to dig deeper into early literacy and family literacy? rnrnConsider hosting a virtual book club where we explore these ideas together.rnrn
Learn more. As a parent, you probably want to know your child feels happy, safe, and cared for at school or daycare—and that they’re getting a solid educational foundation to launch their future.
Strong reading and writing skills are central to kids’ school success and eventual prospects in all sorts of arenas. But how can you tell if your child’s school is setting them up for success in reading and writing?
You don’t need a degree in education to recognize high-quality literacy instruction. Once you know what to look for, a few observations and key questions can tell you a lot about whether a program is building the language and literacy skills your child needs.
And if something feels off, you don’t have to quietly accept it. Parents can be powerful advocates for better literacy practices—not by battling teachers, but by partnering with them.
Here’s what to look for as your child grows, from daycare through elementary school.
Start Early: What to Look for in Daycare and Preschool
Long before children learn to read, they’re building the language foundation that reading depends on. That means the early years matter enormously.
A strong daycare or preschool program should feel language-rich and playful. You should hear adults talking with children—not just directing them. Teachers should ask open-ended questions, introduce new vocabulary naturally, and encourage lots of back-and-forth conversation (aka encourage your child to talk and then really listen to them).
Pretend play, storytelling, songs, nursery rhymes, and read-alouds all help children develop the oral language skills that later support reading comprehension and writing, too.
- Look for the elements I discuss in this post: How to Choose a Preschool or Childcare for Your Child
- And check out this post for more related tips: Things Every Daycare Should Be Doing to Protect Kids’ Brains
Preschool is also an important time for children to begin learning the ABCs, both the names of letters and the sounds they represent. Research shows that kids who enter kindergarten knowing more letters have an easier time learning to read and advancing later on.
If you’re evaluating a daycare or preschool, pay attention to whether language, letters, and literacy are woven throughout the day in joyful, meaningful ways.
Early Elementary: Look Closely at Reading Instruction
Once kids start elementary school and begin formal reading instruction, the teaching approach matters tremendously. And with most kids in the U.S. not reading at grade level, the stakes are high. So how can you evaluate the reading instruction at your child’s school?
One of the biggest things parents can learn to recognize is the difference between structured literacy instruction and approaches that expect children to “pick up” reading naturally.
Research consistently shows that most children benefit from direct, sequential instruction in how written language works. That means teachers clearly explain the relationships between letters and sounds, guide students through practice, and build skills in a logical sequence.
You should hear administrators or teachers talking about phonics or the “science of reading.”
- Find out more about what to look for here: Why Phonics Instruction Matters—and How to Know if Your Child is Getting It
By contrast, some classrooms still rely heavily on approaches that encourage kids to guess words from pictures and context clues. While those strategies may look smooth on the surface, they can leave many children without the skills they need.
Ask About Decodable Books
One simple question can reveal a lot about a school’s reading philosophy: “Do students use decodable books as part of their early reading instruction?”
Decodable books are early reading texts that are carefully designed so children can actually sound out—aka “decode”—the words using the phonics patterns they’ve learned.
For example, if a child has learned a few consonants and short vowel A, an appropriate decodable text might include sentences like: “Matt sat.” However uninspiring from a literary perspective, the text gives the child repeated chances to practice applying what they’ve learned and to experience success reading independently. It also builds habits of paying attention to each letter and sound within words, which will serve them well as their letter-sound knowledge grows.
Relying on pictures or memorization of whole words as the primary way to identify words just doesn’t scale. If a school depends mostly on predictable books and sight-word lists, children may appear to be reading but not actually develop the letter-sound decoding skills needed to become skilled, fluent readers.
Predictable books, rich read‑alouds, and other “authentic” texts still have an important place in learning. They can help build oral language, vocabulary, background knowledge, and comprehension. But they should complement, not replace, opportunities for students to bridge into independent reading with decodable texts.
- I spoke with Sara Cotner of Montessori for All about the importance of decodable readers and explicit phonics instruction: A Montessori Expert Shares Science-Based Tips for How to Raise a Reader
As Kids Grow, Pay Attention to Writing and Spelling
Spelling often gets short shrift from schools and parents who think it matters less than reading and writing, but the fact is that the three are intimately connected.
What’s more, good spelling makes other people, like teachers and future hiring managers, judge your child more favorably. Knowing the nuances between similarly spelled words is also key for your child to make sense of more complicated texts as they get older.
Unfortunately, many schools and classrooms skip over spelling instruction altogether—or limit it to weekly lists of random words to memorize.
A stronger approach teaches spelling patterns, word structure, and the logic behind spelling. As your child gets older, it’s worth asking their teacher or school if they teach spelling, and what it looks like if they do.
- Use these questions to evaluate the quality of spelling instruction: 9 Questions to Ask Your Child’s Teacher About Spelling Instruction
How to Advocate for Better Literacy Instruction
If you discover gaps in your child’s language and literacy formation at their school or care center, it’s time to speak up. It can feel uncomfortable to be the “squeaky wheel,” but remember that advocacy does not have to be adversarial.
Most teachers care deeply about helping children succeed. Many are working within systems or curricula they didn’t personally choose. Approaching conversations with curiosity and collaboration often opens more doors than confrontation.
- You might say: “I’ve been learning more about evidence-based reading instruction, and I’d love to better understand how reading skills are being taught in the classroom.”
- Or: “My child seems to struggle with decoding unfamiliar words. Are there ways we can support more explicit phonics practice together?”
The goal isn’t to “win” an argument. It’s to build a shared understanding of what helps children become confident readers and writers, and support teachers to deliver it.
Parents don’t need to become literacy experts overnight. But learning a few key concepts and asking thoughtful questions can make an enormous difference in a child’s educational experience.
When families and educators work together around evidence-based literacy practices, kids are far more likely to develop the strong reading and writing skills that support learning for years to come.
Get Reading for Our Lives
Learn how to foster your child’s pre-reading and reading skills easily, affordably, and playfully in the time you’re already spending together.
Get Reading for Our Lives
When my daughter Zora was five, I wanted an honest, independent take on how she was doing as a reader—something that went beyond what I was seeing at home. My first instinct was to look up the big tutoring franchises, the names everyone recognizes. Happily, I mentioned this to a friend whose daughter was a little older, and she said, “Don’t do that! Take her to Lindamood-Bell!”
I’d never heard of the company. But that offhand comment sent me to a resource with a deep research base and far more thorough assessments than anything I’d been considering. Nearly 10 years later, I’ve referred countless families there. One sentence from a friend changed the trajectory for many children.
That’s what I mean when I say connection matters.
We tend to think that the parental side of raising a reader is about what we do one-on-one with our kids—the bedtime stories, the trips through the alphabet or tracing letters on cereal boxes, the patient listening to them sound out words. Yes, all that work is essential. But it’s only part of the job.
Another crucial element is tapping into the assets around you: libraries, family resource centers, bookstores, community programs, and the people who carry knowledge you don’t have—yet. When you make a conscious effort to connect, and to talk openly about what’s happening in your child’s reading life, you amplify your support in ways you can’t manufacture on your own.
Why to Connect
Word of mouth still moves better, if not faster, than the internet in many cases. We assume that because everything is online, every good resource is one search away and there’s no need to ask anyone. Often, though, that isn’t the case.
In my area, we have a wonderful program called Books for Kids run by Next Door Milwaukee, an early childhood education organization. It puts free children’s books into families’ hands. I first heard about it through professional connections when I moved here. And yet I constantly meet people seeking ways to get books to kids who’ve never heard of it, even though it ranks well in online searches. Sometimes a human recommendation, with specific details about the feel or mission of a place, resonates more than typed words among the overwhelm of the internet.
Recently I told the family engagement coordinator of a large mentoring program about Books for Kids. She toured the organization, loved the staff, and began folding the Books for Kids mobile library and other programming into her plans for family events. Now more families will know about this resource going forward. That happened because of a conversation between two people who’d built the kind of trust over time that carries more weight than Google or AI search results.
There’s real power in sharing what we know. And there’s power in showing up to organized spaces, too—the PTA meeting, the presentation for parents, the volunteer get-together. I sit on an early literacy committee that meets by video call monthly, and because I see representatives of the same organizations in those little video squares every month, they stay top-of-mind the moment I’m talking to a family who needs them. The real-world connections I’ve made at organized events and groups over the years have supported my child’s development and that of so many other kids in our communities.
Where to Connect
If the idea of showing up to every event, joining more groups, or seeking out new resources has you feeling tired, anxious, or overstretched, don’t worry. You can start with one small step: your local public library. It’s a free, easy, and low-stress way to start building out support for your growing child.
Just do this:
1. Look up your local library’s website and bookmark it.
2. Find the children’s programming and events calendar.
3. Pick a story time and make a plan to go.
4. Sign up for a library card.
Libraries are free. They’re open to everyone. They exist to help, and a conversation about books is exactly what’s expected there. It’s the lowest-stakes place to start building your child’s literacy village.
How to Connect
The people part can be trickier at first. But if you start small, the rest can flow naturally. Talk to the people you already encounter. Once you’re chatting, ask what books or programs their family has loved. Tell them what you’re excited (or worried) about in your own child’s reading. Just be open.
You can also keep an eye out for fellow readers. If you notice another parent reading to their child, or a family with books at the playground, let that be your opening. The book is an invitation.
If you’re at home with your child, it can sometimes feel hard to meet anyone new. That’s when library story time can offer a valuable opening, and the librarian may be able to point you to other parent events or groups, too.
Many communities also have family resource centers, funded by federal, state, local, and grant dollars—sometimes called family support centers or family success centers. They’re less numerous than libraries, but their mission is to strengthen families, so they focus on family programs and connecting families to other services and supports.
If, on the other hand, you’re at work while your child is with caretakers, it’s easy to feel isolated from other parents. But the same library and family supports are often available during the hours you spend with your child. You might also ask your child’s daycare director, preschool teacher, or nanny to connect you with other families.
Ask Yourself Four Questions
For a quick gut check on whether you’re building this web of support, ask yourself:
- Who do I know?
- Who knows me?
- Who does my child know?
- Who knows my child?
If your answers feel thin, that’s okay. It’s a starting point. Every name is a door.
You’re a Connection, Too
Connection isn’t a one-way street, where you try to reach experts and institutions. It’s more like a busy roundabout full of parents, organizations, and the connectors between them, all feeding one another.
This means you’re not only someone who receives. The moment you learn about a free book program, discover a great children’s museum, or finally get that library card, you become a resource for your friends, family, and neighbors.
When all of us carry that mindset—that we’re here to give out information and support, not just gather it—the connections multiply, and the benefits reach far past our own front doors.
So make the call. Send the text. Mention the program. Raising a reader was never meant to be a solo job.
Host a Virtual Book Club
Want to dig deeper into early literacy and family literacy? Consider hosting a virtual book club where we explore these ideas together.
Learn more. “Mommy Camp.”
I’ve announced it to my 14-year-old. She is not impressed.
As a mature teen heading into high school, the phrase “Mommy Camp” lands as many things do with her—with a sigh and a counteroffer: “Can’t I just get a workbook or something?”
Sorry, but you know that’s just not my style.
This summer, before freshman year starts, there are a few gaps in her education I’m excited to address. Subject number one: cursive writing.
Somewhere between COVID school closures and a family move across the country, cursive instruction just didn’t stick with her. And I’ll admit: I’m old school about this. I think being able to write quickly and fluidly in your own hand still matters. It’s a thinking tool. It’s an expression tool. I want her to send handwritten thank-you notes in her own distinctive script. I want her to be able to read historical documents without squinting and straining.
So we’re doing cursive. Together. Side by side. Me as the eager instructor, her as the reluctant student.
But here’s the thing: before I sit down with her, I have homework of my own.
The Part Nobody Talks About
Although I use it daily, I don’t teach cursive. I haven’t thought hard about it in 30 years. If I just print out a worksheet from the internet and march us through it, I’ll lose her interest—and mine!—in no time.
So before Mommy Camp starts, I’m doing what I always do when I want to teach something I haven’t taught before. I’m researching my options. I’m reading first-person accounts from parents who’ve taught their kids. I’m watching demonstration videos to see how experienced instructors sequence the strokes and pace the practice. I’m trying to pick the approach that’s best suited to a smart, skeptical 14-year-old who would rather be doing literally anything else.
This is just how I’m wired. It’s also the through-line of every piece of my work as a literacy advocate.
There’s a name for this. We just don’t use it much.
It’s parent development.
Child Development Gets All the Airtime
We talk constantly about child development. There are milestone charts in pediatricians’ offices, parenting books organized by age and stage, podcasts about toddlers and tweens and teens.
The entire conversation around raising kids is built on the (correct) idea that children are growing — physically, cognitively, socially, emotionally — and that the adults around them need to know what’s happening at each stage.
What we almost never name is the parallel growth happening on the other side of that equation.
Parents grow, too. Or rather: we have to grow, if we want to fully support our kids.
When my daughter was little, one of the most important things I did for her wasn’t anything I did with her. It was the work I did on myself—taking a course in the foundations of reading instruction, calling the researchers whose articles I’d read, asking each of them the same question: “What’s the one piece of practical advice you’d give a parent?” To get her from point A to point B, I had to get myself up to speed, too.
That was a decade ago, and it became the beginning of a whole new career.
Now here I am again, on a much smaller scale, with a much taller kid, getting myself ready to teach her something I don’t yet know how to teach. The subject changes. The pattern doesn’t.
What Parent Development Looks Like
It isn’t complicated. It just requires us to name it as a thing, give it some space, and not be shy about being a learner.
Here’s a simple version:
- Pick one thing to work on. Just one. Maybe it’s a skill your child missed (cursive, multiplication facts, riding a bike). Maybe it’s a topic you’ve been worried about (job stability in the AI age, mental health, screen time). Maybe it’s something about yourself as your child’s first teacher—what tests your patience, shakes your confidence, or motivates you to dig in.
- Choose how you’ll learn it. A book. A course. A podcast while you walk. An audiobook in the car. A conversation with a specialist. A milestone checklist. A long phone call with the wisest friend you have. A Substack from a real expert. Whatever fits your life and style.
- Make it small and time-bound. Before September. Over the next four weekends. By the time school starts. Whatever works for you. A learning project with no end date is a daydream.
- Don’t aim for expertise. Aim for one notch up. You don’t have to master it. You can go slow; just keep advancing. Parent development is incremental.
Why Summer Is Your Time
June invites this work, whether we name it or not. School is done. Report cards shipped. A vast, less-structured expanse unfolds for our kids. Most of us are quietly running an informal self-review—wondering what worked, what dipped, what slipped this school year. We just don’t call it parent development, so the noticing happens without the action.
Summer is the right container because the stakes are lower. There’s no curriculum our kids are behind on. There’s no teacher waiting for the email. There’s just us, our kids, and a little more time than usual to be deliberate.
For me, that means Mommy Camp. A little cursive a day keeps the woulda-coulda- shouldas away.
What’s Your One Thing?
There’s a line on my website I wrote a long time ago and still believe: Parents raise children, but we also grow ourselves. We parent best when we’re at our best.
I don’t think “best” means perfect. I think it means curious. Willing to be a beginner. Willing to say to your child, “Let me figure this out and then I’ll teach you.” Willing to sit with a research article or a YouTube tutorial after the kids are in bed because, somehow, your job description has quietly grown again.
Mommy Camp is my version this summer.
What’s yours?
Host a Virtual Book Club
Want to dig deeper into early literacy and family literacy? Consider hosting a virtual book club where we explore these ideas together.
Learn more. We’ve all heard the advice: “Read to your child every night.” It’s a beautiful ritual for bonding, building your child’s vocabulary, and deepening your relationship. However, it ignores a key truth I realized while researching my book, Reading for Our Lives: most kids are looking at the illustrations, not the words.
While kids are soaking in the story, they might not actually realize that the magic is coming from the print on the page. Bringing focus to the words on the page helps children build the print awareness they need to move from simply listening to stories to actually reading words on their own. And it misses a golden opportunity to build literacy and reading skills alongside their love of the stories told in books.
The good news is that you don’t have to change your routine or find extra hours in the day to bridge this gap. Keep the bedtime story for the bonding and story love (or a morning story time for those, like me, who are exhausted by bedtime), but add 60 seconds of literacy practice to build up some key skills that will set up your child for reading success.
To raise a child who truly masters reading, we have to be deliberate about bringing their attention to written language, the sounds that make up words, and how the two connect. Here are three simple tweaks to your story time that can shift your read-aloud time from a passive listening experience for your child to an active literacy lesson:
1. The Power of the Finger-Point
It sounds almost too simple, but dragging your finger along text you read is a game-changer. This small gesture teaches a child that the story comes from the print, not just the art.
It also helps them understand that English text flows from left to right and from the top of the page down. By following your finger, your child can begin to see exactly which black marks on the page hold the sounds of the story.
This “print awareness” is a key early step to unlocking the secrets of reading for your child. The sooner they understand that these marks are a code representing words, the sooner (and easier) they can start to learn the code itself.
Then take it up a notch by tracing your finger along a specific letter, like this:
2. Teach and Trace Letters
You don’t need a classroom or a special curriculum to teach letters. Just use a modified version of the finger point. Point out a letter and give a quick explanation. Tell its name, the sound it makes, and describe its shape as you trace it with your finger.
When my daughter Zora was small, I taught her how to write her name, but I didn’t realize at first that she didn’t know those symbols she’d memorized represented specific sounds.
Spend just 30 seconds talking about the lines, dots, and curves that make up a letter like Z. Just say something like: This is Z. It makes /z/ like in Zora. It has a short line across, then a line that goes down and sideways, then another short line across. After you trace it with your finger, invite your child to do the same.
This alphabet knowledge makes the eventual road to reading so much easier. You can also do this kind of lesson anytime, anyplace. After all, your kitchen and neighborhood are full of letters. Just point them out on cereal boxes, graphic t-shirts, or street signs and give a 15-second lesson whenever you think of it.
3. Discuss Sounds During Story Time
Literacy actually starts with the ears. Before a child can map a sound to a letter, they have to be able to discern sounds within words—a skill called phonological awareness.
You can build this during your regular reading time by pausing briefly to play with the words on the page.
- Identify starting sounds: Point to a word and discuss the initial sound: Look, cat starts with the /k/ sound.
- Clap out the syllables: Choose a word with two or more syllables, then demonstrate clapping it out to hear the parts of the word. Share that these parts are called syllables.
- Play with rhymes: In rhyming books, point out the rhyming words to help your child hear how changing just the starting sound creates a brand-new word.
- Emphasize alliteration: Point out sentences that use the same starting sound, like “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” Highlight the sound and tie it to the letter.
Build Literacy in 60 Seconds a Day
Making any of these tweaks can turn even a short story time into a literacy learning powerhouse. Just keep it to a minimum—I’m not kidding when I say that 60 seconds can do it. You want to keep the emphasis on the story, bonding, and reading joy.
Along the way, these tiny, deliberate shifts in your daily routine can open the door to easier, more enjoyable reading for your child, and all the success in school, communication, and life that comes along with it.
Host a Virtual Book Club
Want to dig deeper into early literacy and family literacy? Consider hosting a virtual book club where we explore these ideas together.
Learn more. A literacy coordinator shows a colorful, 14-page board book to a three-year-old during a well-child doctor’s visit. She reads the story aloud, then asks the child to point to the cover, name some letters, and write their name on the back.
In less than 10 minutes, that exchange reveals nine telling data points about that child’s path to reading—well before kindergarten.
This simple but powerful check-in is called “emergent literacy screening.” It’s a growing feature during medical care for small kids at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Providers there have already screened 2,400 children across 13 pediatric clinics.
A recent AP article reported on the hospital’s literacy screening program. That’s great—except that the article left out the details that matter most for parents and other caring adults who read it. AP didn’t explain how the program measures small kids’ early literacy, nor did it tell parents what they can do at home to keep kids on track.
So let me.
The Reading House
I first wrote about a hospital’s nascent literacy efforts on this blog 10 years ago (see When Books Are the Best Medicine: Fostering Literacy in the ER), and I’m thrilled to see how far things have come, with formal literacy coordinators now embedded in some exam rooms. It’s a great sign that health systems are heeding the American Academy of Pediatrics’ longstanding argument: that literacy promotion belongs in family medical care.
Done well, this kind of early intervention can redirect thousands of children’s reading trajectories before reading challenges and learning gaps become entrenched.
The hospital’s early-literacy screening program uses a simple but effective screening tool. It’s a board book titled The Reading House that comes with a scripted scoring form the adult fills in after reading and interacting with the child. Dr. John Hutton, a pediatrician, researcher, and former bookstore owner, developed the tool. I heard him speak about it at a Reach Out and Read conference in 2024.
It’s important to name what tool the hospital uses if we want other programs to replicate it—so that pediatric clinics, Head Start programs, or family literacy nonprofits across the country can find, study, and adopt the same tool.
Here’s how a Reading House screening works: A pediatric clinician or literacy educator sits with the child and walks through the book with them, as described above. To be clear, they’re not testing whether the three-year-olds can read. Most cannot.
Instead, they’re assessing the building blocks of reading that a child needs stacked up before they can start actually reading. They evaluate the child’s vocabulary, familiarity with books, knowledge of the alphabet, ability to hear and recognize different sounds (called “phonological awareness”), and early writing skills.
In the assessment, the child listens, points, responds, scribbles. The adult scores what they observe. Research has found that children who score higher in this screening show measurable differences in the brain regions that support language and reading.
Why Parents Need the Literacy Screening Details
The AP article‘s comment section illustrates exactly what happens when media coverage is too vague. The article reports that the hospital has “begun screening children’s literacy skills starting at age three,” but doesn’t explain what that means—leading some readers to assume the hospital was expecting kids to actually read at that age.
One commenter, for example, asked a fair question: “Three-year-olds can’t read. Please give us an idea of what it means to screen an (illiterate, in 99.9% of cases) three-year-old’s ‘literacy skills’?” The article never addresses that natural question.
Another commenter objected that the piece advocated turning toddlers into readers, arguing that many children aren’t developmentally ready to read until age eight. They’re wrong about the screening’s aim and the developmental timeline, but the confusion is understandable.
The article glossed over the basics: what the screening asks of children and how reading differs from its precursors (like letter knowledge and sound awareness). So the public filled in the gaps themselves—with mistakes. A valuable opportunity to educate parents and other adults who cared enough to read the article and comment was lost.
What You Can Do About Early Literacy
Parents don’t need to wait for a doctor or clinic visit to support early literacy skills. If you have a baby, talk to them all the time—narrate your day, name objects, describe what you’re doing.
If you have a toddler, read aloud to them and ask questions that invite them to talk, too: What do you see? What sound does that start with?
With a preschooler, teach and practice letter names and the sounds they make. Help your child write their own name. Play with rhymes.
See my post about language and literacy milestones for babies and young kids, so you can anticipate the experiences your child should have in order to make good progress along the path to reading.
And see these other articles for age-specific strategies to nurture your child’s early literacy:
With babies:
- Language Nutrition: Talk to Your Baby
- 4 Brilliant Ways Nursery Rhymes Prepare Kids to Read and Write
With toddlers:
With preschoolers:
With school-aged kids:
- Why Phonics Instruction Matters—and How to Know if Your Child is Getting It
- Reading Fluency Strategy: Help Your Child Recognize Words Quickly and Confidently
The skills that the Reading House literacy screening evaluates aren’t mysterious. They develop through simple, everyday interactions. With a little knowledge, time, and attention, any parent or caregiver can help their babies and kids top the charts.
Host a Virtual Book Club
Want to dig deeper into early literacy and family literacy?
Consider hosting a virtual book club where we explore these ideas together.
A mom I know recently told me about watching her eighth-grade son on FaceTime, helping a friend prep for a school presentation.
The two boys were partners tasked with delivering a written report to their class. But the friend couldn’t read it—couldn’t read much of anything, really—so instead, her son was patiently helping him memorize the key points.
She was proud of her son’s kindness, but absolutely heartbroken about his friend.
Her son had struggled too. For years, an individual education plan (IEP) had given him structured support to catch up to grade-level reading this year, on the cusp of high school. Two caring, knowledgeable teachers and a mother who advocated relentlessly made all the difference.
His friend never got that. It’s tempting to chalk it up to learning disabilities or bad luck. But it’s really a story about what happens when kids don’t receive the right reading instruction early and what becomes possible when they do.
The good news: you don’t have to leave this to chance. Here’s what the research says about how children learn to read, and what to look for in your child’s classroom.
How Reading Actually Works
The ability to read comes from the combination of multiple skills.
Some of those skills grow naturally through spoken language. Conversation, storytelling, and shared experiences help children build vocabulary and background knowledge that lets them understand what they eventually read.
Other skills are different. They’re specific to written language and the “alphabetic code”: the system of written letters that represent spoken sounds. These skills don’t grow naturally through daily life. We have to teach them.
As children approach school age, they need to be taught the alphabetic code—the relationships between speech sounds and their spellings. This can get a little complicated, because English has 44 sounds but only 26 letters to represent them. This means that some letters represent multiple sounds and many sounds have multiple spellings that use one, two, three, or even four letters (Think: go, show, woe, though).
How Parents Can Help Before Kindergarten
You can point out letters in everyday life and talk about their shapes. Specifically pointing out and describing the lines, curves, and dots that make up each individual letter helps kids distinguish between them. An N and an M are similar, but when you point out the lines and trace them, the difference is clearer.
You can also help children notice that spoken words are made up of parts—syllables and individual sounds like their starting sound, middle sounds, and ending sounds.
Kids pick all this up gradually. They can typically notice syllables first—if you start pointing them out—and then start being able to distinguish beginning sounds, then ending sounds, and eventually all the sounds within words. This helps explain why children who are learning their letters may at first try spelling a word by writing just its starting letter.
Once children understand that words are made of individual sounds, they can begin connecting those sounds to letters (and letter combinations) in print.
As they get older, this understanding grows through both experience and specific instruction. They learn that certain letter patterns tend to go together in English, while some combinations rarely appear. They discover that word endings like -s, -es, and -ed carry meaning—such as plural or past tense.
Spelling is not random, even though it can often feel that way. Just 4% of English words are truly irregular. The specific way words are written has to do with patterns of sound, meaning, and history that can be taught and learned.
Some kids pick up these patterns on their own, figuring out, for instance, that the spelling ough is pronounced differently in borough and through. But most children learn these patterns faster and better when someone directly teaches them.
Imagine going to another country where you don’t know the language—and it’s written in a different alphabet. If you stayed long enough, you would surely learn to communicate and pick up critical information on signs or menus. But you would get there a lot faster if someone offered you a phrasebook that directly taught you the most common words and expressions you’d need in the language you already understand.
Where Schools Come In
Once children enter kindergarten, schools need to focus on helping them master this alphabetic system. This is where phonics instruction becomes essential.
Phonics refers to the relationship between speech sounds and written letters. It teaches children how to map one onto the other. In the above analogy, it’s the “phrasebook” for written English—the guide that connects what you know to what you don’t.
In English, for example, the long A sound can be spelled ay, ey, eigh, and several other ways. But it cannot be spelled kt, for example.
Phonics is both knowledge of the alphabetic code and a strategy for reading unfamiliar words—it’s what lets kids “sound out” new words.
A phonics-based approach teaches children to look carefully at each letter or letter combination, connect the letter or letters to a sound, and then blend the sounds of a word together.
This differs from less-reliable reading strategies like guessing based on pictures, guessing from the first letter, or memorizing word shapes.
Decades of research show that phonics is the most effective way to help most children learn to read. This may sound obvious, but it has been the subject of serious debate—and many schools do not have systematic phonics instruction or phonics-trained teachers, despite overwhelming evidence of its value.
What Effective Phonics Instruction Looks Like
Strong phonics instruction is explicit: It teaches children directly how the code works. It’s systematic, meaning skills are taught in a logical order. And it’s cumulative, so new learning builds on what came before.
You’ll know instruction is direct when you observe the teacher:
- Tell students the purpose of the day’s lesson. (E.g., “Today we’re going to learn about the long E sound.”)
- Show kids specific sound-spelling correspondences with examples. (E.g., “The sound /ē/ can be spelled “ee” like in feet or tree.”)
- Supervise the kids’ practice and offer immediate corrections when needed.
- Have kids practice alone only after showing them what to do and observing them do it.
This kind of direct phonics instruction is in sharp contrast to other approaches where the student leads, does a lot of self-directed activities, or reads silently. None of those things is wrong in themselves, but students need strong phonics understanding before they work and learn well independently.
This point is critically important. We shouldn’t expect young students to teach themselves.
When teachers do give students texts to try to read independently, the texts need to be “decodable.” That means they must contain phonics patterns that the kids have learned. They cannot be just “reading-level texts” that aren’t directly tied to the phonics lessons kids have been getting.
The direct phonics instruction approach gives kids a fair shot at using what they’ve been taught to successfully read. Other approaches leave many kids staring blankly at incomprehensible texts and making little reading progress from year to year.
Research from the U.S., U.K., and Australia has consistently shown that systematic phonics instruction greatly improves English reading outcomes.
Why Isn’t Phonics Instruction Universal?
Many teachers were not trained this way. Others may view phonics as dry or overly technical, or not really understand it themselves.
And the system has depth and layers, it’s true. English uses 26 letters, about 44 speech sounds, and more than 200 spelling patterns. But with proper training and a strong curriculum, this complexity is absolutely manageable. It’s not rocket science. It’s simply a code with nuances that generations of teachers and students have mastered.
Fixing how teachers are trained is a long-term project, and it’s not something you can solve from your child’s classroom. What you can do is know what good instruction looks like—and ask for it.
What Parents Should Look For
If your child is not yet a fluent reader, check that their school and teachers will provide direct, well-sequenced phonics instruction.
You can learn a lot by asking simple questions:
- What curriculum do you use?
- What phonics scope and sequence do you follow?
- Are children assigned decodable books?
- How much time do you spend on phoneme awareness?
- How much time do you spend on phonics?
You can also observe. In a strong early-reading classroom, you’re likely to see teachers helping children work on manipulating sounds inside words to build more understanding. For example, a teacher may tell them: “Say mat. Now change the /m/ to /b/. That’s right. It makes bat.”
Expert teachers implementing a strong phonics curriculum may also have students use mirrors to watch how their mouths form sounds. They may encourage kids to feel their throats to notice the vibration or place their hands in front of their mouths to detect puffs of air when they speak. Attention to these physical nuances in how sounds are articulated is extremely beneficial for kids who are struggling to discern similar sounds within words, which affects reading and spelling.
Activities like these show that the teacher understands that reading begins with hearing and producing the sounds inside words. Such hands-on lessons may be rarer than forms of phonics instruction that teach sounds but not how they are made, but they are a sure sign of good instruction.
You’ll also want to watch for whether the teacher provides immediate feedback when students make a reading mistake and directs them to pay attention to the letters within the words, even when spellings are irregular.
This kind of instruction is especially important for multilingual learners, children who speak different dialects, and struggling readers. However, it benefits all students, helping them all become the thriving readers they deserve to be—and that our society needs them to be.
Get Reading for Our Lives: The Urgency of Early Literacy and the Action Plan to Help Your Child
Learn how to foster your child’s pre-reading and reading skills easily, affordably, and playfully in the time you’re already spending together.
Get Reading for Our Lives Last year, I stood in front of a room full of thoughtful, engaged adults and asked a simple question:
“What is reading?”
Hands went up.
“Empowerment.” “Freedom.” “Escape.” “Exploration.” “Learning.”
Beautiful answers. True answers.
But those aren’t what reading is.
They’re what reading does. They’re how it feels.
If we want to help our children become strong readers, we need to understand what reading actually is—at its core. Once we’re clear about that, we start seeing opportunities everywhere.
The Idea that Makes Teaching Reading Simple
Years ago, in a University of Virginia course on the foundations of reading instruction, I learned about something called the “Simple View of Reading.”
It’s not flashy. It’s not trendy. It’s not a program.
It’s a simple conceptual model that explains how reading works. I return to it again and again, because it gives me a clear picture I can hang everything else on.
Reading comprehension (understanding what you read) happens when two things come together:
- Oral language comprehension—understanding spoken words and ideas
- Written word recognition—being able to look at printed letters and turn them into spoken words (sometimes called “decoding” or “understanding the alphabetic principle”)
You can picture it like this:
Spoken Language × Written Word Recognition = Reading
Both parts matter. If either one is weak, understanding suffers.
Here’s the line I often share with parents:
Your child can’t understand anything in writing that they wouldn’t understand if you said it out loud to them.
Sit with that for a moment.
If a word like astonished or enormous or responsibility isn’t in your child’s spoken vocabulary, seeing it on a page won’t magically create understanding. Similarly, if they have never seen an armadillo or a microscope, sounding it out won’t get them far.
This means that if a child can perfectly sound out every word on a page but doesn’t know what those words mean, they aren’t truly reading. They’re reciting.
Reading happens when we know words in speech and in writing.
Why This Changes Everything at Home
Once you think about reading in these two buckets—spoken language and written word recognition—you see your day differently.
Conversations at breakfast build oral language.
Explaining what you’re doing while cooking builds knowledge and vocabulary.
Telling stories from your own childhood builds narrative skills.
Singing songs and nursery rhymes builds awareness of the sounds inside words.
Pointing to a stop sign and saying “S-T-O-P. Those letters spell stop” builds print awareness.
Noticing letters on cereal boxes or describing the straight lines and curves in an M builds familiarity with the alphabetic code.
None of that requires a special curriculum. It requires attention.
When you understand that letters represent the sounds we hear in speech—that written words are a code for spoken language—you see why rhymes, alliteration, and playful word games matter. They tune your child’s ear to the sounds inside words, which supports decoding later.
And when you understand that comprehension depends on spoken language, it never feels optional to spend time in rich, back-and-forth conversation with your child. It’s not “extra.” It’s foundational.
What’s more, all this doesn’t just make it easier to understand how reading develops. It makes it easy to seed literacy and teach reading at home, through everyday moments with your child.
Reading Is Rooted in Relationships
Reading grows through relationships.
Before a child can decode a sentence, they need thousands of warm, responsive conversations.
Before they can understand a story on paper, they need experience understanding stories told aloud.
- When you chat in the car …
- When you narrate bath time …
- When you laugh over a silly rhyme …
- When you answer their endless why questions …
You build the spoken language half of reading.
- When you trace letters with your finger …
- When you point to words as you read …
- When you help your child hear the /b/ sound at the beginning of ball …
You build the written word recognition half.
When those two parts grow together, comprehension follows.
Why I Love This Model
The Simple View isn’t earth-shattering. It’s not complicated. But it gives you a powerful mental image.
It keeps literacy from shrinking down to a single activity like bedtime storytime.
It reminds you that reading is the culmination of:
- Talking
- Listening
- Explaining
- Singing
- Playing with sounds
- Noticing print
- Connecting meaning to symbols
- Sharing books and stories
All woven together.
Understanding this matters from the beginning, as you lay the foundation for your child’s reading.
It also matters long-term, as you support your child’s development into a budding and then skilled and then better and better reader.
With schools focusing on phonics, decoding, and language comprehension, parents who understand this framework can better support and advocate for their children. You’ll recognize what your child’s teachers are asking them to do—and why.
A Simple Way to Start
Tonight, try this:
Ask yourself: What did we do today that built my child’s spoken language?
Ask: What did we do that connected letters to sounds?
You might be surprised by how much you’re already doing.
If you want one small next step, add one more back-and-forth conversation tomorrow. Or point out one word you see together and talk about its letters and sounds.
That’s it.
When you understand what reading is, you stop seeing literacy as something that only happens when you open a book.
You see it as something that grows all day long—through language, connection, and shared attention.
And that shift? That’s when you realize you’ve been teaching reading all along.
School is a building which has four walls with tomorrow inside.
Lon Watters
In my book, Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six, I’ve endeavored to show parents why and how to play an active, hands-on role in helping their children become thriving readers.
But that’s not meant to suggest that parents should go it alone when it comes to turning their kids into readers. No one does. Every child’s road to reading is supported by a range of people, from the librarians who stock children’s books and host story time to the pediatricians who monitor developmental milestones and refer patients for additional assessment and care. Schools and teachers, in particular, are major contributors to reading development, when they are well-trained and well-supported in delivering high-quality instruction.
So part of the work of parenting for reading is being intentional about the formal learning spaces that we place our kids in. Fortunately, if you engage in the kind of everyday teaching and intentional conversation with kids around literacy that I advocate for in Reading for Our Lives, you’ll naturally acquire deep, first-hand knowledge of reading instruction. This will inform how you consider and select early childhood education centers and schools for your children.
When you have worked to build connection, vocabulary, and IQ through conversation; to bolster awareness of the sounds within words and the print in books and the environment; to teach letter names, shapes, and sounds; and to connect sounds to print and print to sounds, you can better recognize the education and childcare settings that will do the same. You’ll be able to spot the spaces and personnel that will help take your children’s reading to new heights.
This article will share a short list of items to look and listen for—and reflect upon—when you research and tour schools or childcare settings. However, I want to emphasize that you’ll best grasp all of these considerations if you’ve done the other talking, reading, and teaching work that I recommend. As Dr. Judson Brewer puts it, “Concepts don’t magically become wisdom with the wave of a wand. You actually have to do the work so the concepts translate into know-how through your own experience.”
It’s our everyday interactions with our kids, not studying reading instruction, that make us their best literacy advocates. What we do to engage our kids and what we learn about how they learn informs every other educational decision we make on their behalf.
How to Pick a Preschool or School That Boosts Literacy
Academic researchers look to things like teacher quality, curriculum, class size, environmental stimulation, and an array of other factors when assessing preschool quality. But I find that most parents typically have a much shorter list of selection criteria. Moms and dads focus on how close the options are to home or work, what the hours of operation are, and whether or not the places look clean and safe.
Only after those basic criteria are met (and if they have more than one viable option), do most then delve into the nuances of different curriculum and education philosophies, from Montessori and Reggio Emilia to Waldorf and HighScope.
When assessing options, I urge parents to tune into the sounds of the classroom and listen for the responsiveness, kindness, and knowledge on display. Just as children’s back-and-forth exchanges with their parents have a lasting impact on the kids’ brain development and academic prospects, dialogue and nurturing relationships with teachers matter greatly, too.
So, whether checking out in-home childcare, public-school pre-K programs, Head Start, or private preschool, here are a few things to look and listen for. All of these apply across the board when thinking about literacy in early learning spaces.
Back-and-Forth Conversation with Kids
Look for settings in which teachers have dynamic, nurturing verbal exchanges with each and every child. Just as parents provide critical language nutrition for their children, educators in infant, toddler, and preschool classrooms also spur vital nurturing, brain-building conversations.
So, when visiting classrooms or observing them via virtual tours, pay attention to how much teachers are talking with children; how well they are listening for kids’ responses, whether words, coos, or babbles; and whether or not each child in the space gets attention and conversation.
Class size, teacher inclinations and beliefs, and school culture can all affect word counts and conversational turns, and research has found vast disparities in how much talk different children within a space receive and give. Make sure your child is in a school where every child’s voice and participation is valued and encouraged.
Questions to Ponder
- Are teachers having nurturing one-on-one conversations with children, in addition to addressing small groups or the whole classroom?
- Are teachers pausing to listen for and respond to the children’s speech, whether words or babbles?
- What’s the ratio of direction/commands (e.g. sit down, be quiet) to conversation?
- Do the teachers speak to students with respect and value their expressions and classroom contributions?
Intentional Programming
Look for settings in which teachers can state what skills they intend to build, how they will nurture and assess them, and when and how they’ll communicate progress to families. The preliteracy and literacy skills that kids should be cultivating at different ages and stages vary widely, so be sure that the programs under consideration have a clear sense of what they’re teaching, why, and how.
For example, with infants, a teacher might share that they prioritize care, nurturing, and brain-building conversation—plus introduce books as objects of exploration, allowing babies to pat, chew, and turn the pages without expectation of great attention to the print or stories.
A teacher of toddlers might say they focus on giving children a variety of materials, letting them lead their own play, and encouraging them to create in their own way. The teacher might aim to provide a great deal of individual attention while also encouraging kids to try things on their own to see how far they get.
In a preschool program, you might expect more explicit discussion of the sounds within words and of letter names, shapes, and sounds, paving the way for formal instruction in phonics and spelling in kindergarten and beyond.
Beyond hearing the teachers’ intentions and method, also look for signs that they view parents as partners in educating children. Listen for assurances that they will keep you posted on what’s happening with your child throughout the year, so that you can continue to provide timely, responsive literacy support at home.
Questions to Ponder
- Do the teachers seem to enjoy their work and interactions with children?
- What curriculum or philosophy does the school follow? Is it accredited in the approach?
- What programs, degrees, certifications, or experience do the teachers bring to their positions?
- What blocks, toys, books, and other learning materials are on display? Do they seem to support the kind of learning the school says it emphasizes? How accessible are they to children?
A Joyful, Playful Environment
Look for settings in which kids are joyful, playful, active learners. When kids are deeply engaged in activities, and they have the freedom to play and explore the materials in their environment, good things will happen. During site visits, listen for the laughter and squeals of delight that characterize little kids’ engagement and discovery.
And, because we’re focused on reading, books and print should be an integral part of the fun of the learning environment. Look for books shelved in baskets, bins, and other spots that are visible and accessible to crawlers and walkers.
Watch to see if kids are given ample opportunity to handle books themselves. And observe how enthusiastic teachers are about discussing the stories, pointing out illustrations and print, asking questions of their little listeners, and fostering book love.
Questions to Ponder
- How happy and engaged do the children seem to be?
- Does the classroom or school foster a sense of community and connection?
- Are there age-appropriate materials to stimulate imagination, exploration, and discovery?
There is no perfect school, so it’s important to get clear about your highest priorities for your child’s learning environment and to listen to your gut feelings about the staff and spaces you visit. Tour schools with an open mind, open eyes, and open ears to find the options that will best serve your child and family.
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