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I agree that any sort of pressure to learn can be stressful on the child, but that is something I wanted to highlight about using Glen Doman's ideas with babies. You can't teach a baby anything if they are stressed. It is just not going to work if you are pushy or demanding. Pressuring your baby shows a lack of respect and he knows it and will respond by ignoring you which is what you deserve if you act in that way. I don't think children just arrive at a point where they are ready to learn to read without some input first, such as having stories read to them, seeing signs and labels etc. Taking that to the extreme, if you never showed a child any words, he would never be ready to start learning to read. I don't think it does. I think the more babies learn, whatever it is, the more they can learn. Babies are super efficient at processing information around them. You can see this in the way they look at most toys they get their hands on. They pick them up, feel them, shake them, see if they make a noise, smell them, taste them, and if they can't easily break them to see whats inside then that is the investigation over in about a minute. If interested, this article does a much better job of making the case than I do, and deals with the usual objections especially well. http://larrysanger.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/How-and-Why-I-Taught-My-Toddler-to-Read.htm

The impetus behind the whole word approach is not due to linguistic irregularity. The impetus is that you can use that method with very small babies. It is just as effective with phonically regular languages like Swedish. I can not see how teaching babies phonics would work, whereas teaching babies whole words works very well (in my experience). The reason i started this thread is because in a few podcasts Stefan has mentioned the whole word approach as having negative outcomes. I believe the research shows this is true for older children, but i don't think it is true for babies who are taught to read. It has been so psoitive for us that I would love to spread the word. unfortunately, there is a gap in the sceintific research for the reasons i mentioned before, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence.

I agree that children who are given incidental exposure to stories, books, signs, words etc, will get to the stage where they can easily learn to read at around 4-7 years. That is basically saying teach them by accident and when they get to a certain stage teach them deliberately. Why not teach them deliberately from the beginning? Once they can read, they have access to an extra layer of information which surrounds them in the form of words. Based on my experience, the exact opposite is true. It was an easy, and incredibly fruitful experience, both in terms of his improved abilities and our relationship. I remember a friend who is a peaceful parent of a child the same age saying to me "has your child started having random tantrums yet?". His daughter was obvioulsy having tantrums because she could not communicate what she wanted to get accross. Our son is very calm, patient and happy. In Glen Doman's book he describes other children that have been taught to read (and given other information) early as calm and patient, so it was amazing to see it was true. This is a good introduction. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDdWiY6xje0&feature=share&list=UUhnS0h7_7thmtoKgWthZcrQ

I have heard Stefan mention on a few podcasts that the whole word method of learning to read does not work because you are asking the child to memorise the whole language rather than the bits that make it up. I think this is based on research which was carried out on kids older than 3 (please point me to the research if I am wrong) . I worry that by saying that the whole word method damages kids, it would be disuading parents from sharing some wonderful experiences with their kids which i beleive are really beneficial for them both. I can not find any research for the long term effects of teaching babies to read. I think the reason for the lack of research is that it would be very difficult to control for all the variables without selecting siblings where one does the sight words and the other doesn't. I'm not sure any parents would agree to that! Having said that, I have a friend who did the sight words as a kid and her 2 brothers did not. I couldnt say who is happier now that she is 25 and her sibling are around 20, but she has done very well academically whereas her brothers have not. So, here's why i think the whole word method is an effective way for babies to learn to read Children learn to speak by hearing whole words. Parents don't speak to kids in phonics so that they get comfortable with all the bits that make up the language and then later put them together. Its a miracle of statistical processing that kids can work out all these sounds in to a meaningful language, and then even more amazing later to work out how to use their own lungs, throat, tongue, teeth and lips in the correct combinations to make words come out. It is not as if each time they hear a word it is pronounced in the same way as every other time. This is a great book on the subject - How Babies Talk: The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life [Paperback]by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff (Author), Kathy Hirsh-Pasek ( Compare this to learning to read. The letters are written pretty much consistantly which I imagine makes the statistical processing job so much easier. A baby shown enough words can easily associate the sound with the letters and then work out the phonics from that. This is the book that explains the whole word method with babies: How to Teach Your Baby to Read: The Gentle Revolution (How to Teach Your Baby to Read (Paperback)) [Paperback] Glenn J. Doman (Author), Janet Doman - They have an organization at http://iahp.org/ . It was set up to help brain injured kids, and when they realised how well they were doing, they applied the same techniques to well kids. So, does it work? Well, my son is almost 3 and can read any word (even gibberish), which means that now he is constantly reading things to me and asking what words mean.I realise this is cheating in my attempt to persuade people... but this is my lovely boy at 15months:http://youtu.be/5A3VZedQr0U [View:http://youtu.be/5A3VZedQr0U:400:300] The best thing is that if you are demanding, pushy or bribing, it simply doesnt work. It has to be an honest sharing of knowledge without expecting some sort of payback. So, no testing or forcing them to perform! The philosophy of Domans style of very early learning fits in well with peaceful parenting. Your baby is learning from you all the time , whether you like it or not. You can choose what to do with your time with your baby. The more (as in wider variety) things a baby learns, the more he is able to learn and the easier it is for him. One more small point... English is a horribly irregular language. I was looking at a book a few weeks ago and my son pointedt o the word "Hi" and pronounced it phonetically with a short "i" sound, "hi" (as opposed to "high". There are so many words that don't obey the phonetic rules and lots of those are the most common words. So teaching phonics first is giving the child a rule and then pointing out that in the words that come up most often do not obey that rule. Swedish is phonetically very regular, so this isn't such a problem.

A kid could have their own DRO, not neccessarily paid for by their parents. There wouldn't be anything to stop a concerned stranger paying the DRO on the kids behalf, and informing those parents that they had signed the child up to the WeLoveKids DRO. If the parents committed a crime against the kid, a DRO could intervene and get restitution for the child.

A way to make people think a bit might be to argue strongly for a $25 minimum wage. You might even get a left wing statist arguing for a lower minimum wage for once.

I regularly look at the brillkids forum. Its pretty good and full of parents who really get it, but there are some who i can only describe as bullies. A couple of days after watching the very excellent Bomb in the Brain series, someone was talking about how long they intend to use the 'paddle' on their kids. wow, wooosh how fking medievil ahole and a half, so i said if you can spare 10 minutes, this is a really good video about what hitting does to kids.Someone else replied straight away with something like ... "thats just culty nonsense".. just the sort of response you'd expect from the violent ones. It's put me off the forum a bit.. feels a bit dirty to go there now. But I will go back because, there are lots of great and constructive people there who have found out through experience that the best way with kids is cooperation. there wasa similar story in the UK Dailymail not long ago. Same sorts of reposonses. I turned out ok blah blah. Kids today need a good kicking thats why they are so out of control they dont get enough. The violence loving answers were all the most popular, the peaceful ones were red arrowed to oblivion.yesterday there was a childs response to her mums article about why it was ok to hit kids.. its quite a good read , and the comments are much more pro child than the original article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2274725/In-Tuesdays-Mail-Shona-Sibary-admitted-slaps-14-year-old-daughter-Here-furious-Flo-hits-Mum-doesnt-smack-love-She-does-loses-control.html#axzz2KJt41SbU and the orginal http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2273565/SHONA-SIBARY-I-know-horrified-But-I-slap-14-year-old-daughter.html#axzz2KJt41SbU

Wow..+ $217 is quite a lot when compared to most "rich" countres that are firmly in the red. If Zimbabwe was a business I wonder how much it would be valued at.

Thats a great point. So , most parents either truly believe their child is going to a good place everyday... or they attach so little value to the childs wellbeing that it doesn't matter.. or somewhere in the middle .. a bit of both. i.e. a combination of propoganda (which works on ignorance) and selfishness ..... and the more they claim that the school is good, the less they have to admit to the selfishness.

If you have to give up your job to homeschool , it is very expensive.

I think most people are not aware of the violence. Not here in Sweden at least. The centerparty here recently suggested relaxing the compulsory school rules, relaxing the immigratin rules and relaxing the marriage rule (polygamy). they plummeted in the poles. This is an interesting survery about what leads families to homeschool/unschoolhttp://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201203/what-leads-families-unschool-their-children-report-ii I know that when you go and look round a school, it might seem perfectly good.. and all other parents with their kids in that school are likely to say it is good for reasons mentioned before. So signing up for the school could be done in good faith, but once in , the good faith is overtaken with blind faith , or rather the cost of change outweighs the benefit of change which again puts a relatively low value on the childs wellbeing. Before the internet parents could claim not to know about alternatives, but that would be hard to argue now.

I think its more to do with the cost (in terms of inconvenience, money, time and admitting a mistake was made), of taking them out of a school is higher than the cost of leaving them in... i.e. making some small post facto justifications. Which implies that there is quite a low value placed on the quality of school for the kid. also, like when you buy an expensive camera or similar, you are likely to defend your purchase, even as evidence mounts that it was not the best camera you could buy for the money... eventually when there is enough evidence, you have to admit a mistake was made, but this is a lot later than a neutral observer would be able to point that out. sorry for my terrible grammar / sentance orgainsation !! i hope you get my meaning .

I was having a discussion with someone on youtube. He was saying that 80% of parents think the public school system is bad, but 80% of them also think that the school their kid goes to is good. clearly they are just justifying their own bad decisions on their childs behalf... but why do they do this ?

This is a good collection of Rothbard audio http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/4321244/Murray.Rothbard.Audio.Collection-chakra71

The correllation to strong reactions to mild stressors like a bathing is very interesting.

a couple more to add to my list.... * How are things organised so that children have lots of opportunities to teach and learn from each other, especially those younger or older than themselves ? * Who decides what homework there is if any ?

Google does a fantastic job of turning Swedish in to English because the languages are so similar. http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.svd.se%2Fnyheter%2Finrikes%2Fbarnens-pillerkarta-ritas-om_7806908.svd&act=url We were just googling around looking for answers and have left a post on facebook to see if anyone else can help Our eldest is at a cooperative daycare, so we can see the accounts, (actually i will be the accountant next year!) and it works out around £10,000 per child per year. 34 kids are full time and 4 go for 15 hours per week. (age range 1-6) We only pay £240 per year! The state pays the rest... and yes that does bother me. 34 kids sounds great, is that across a large age range ? i.e. do your kids get to mix with older and younger children ?

Hi Ruben, Thanks very much for taking the time to reply. 2 excellent questions to add to our list, and that is interesting and a bit surprising to hear about Belgium, i hadn't considered it before. The good news here is that the drugging of children issue has been the top story in Sweden's biggest newspaper for the last 4 days. The strange thing about the story however, and there is a lot of text so maybe i missed it, is that they don't say who is suggesting the drugs in the first place.. i.e. the teachers, parents or doctors , or whether the schools are getting money for "difficult" kids. My wife and me have asked for school recommendations from friends and in forums, but it is amazing how most people haven't really thought about it. The common response is that all schools are about the same standard so it isn't something to worry about ! I've been shocked to discover how happy most people are to let the Swedish state raise their kids.

We live in sweden. We have 2 boys. Our eldest is 2years and 8months. He goes to a Montessori preschool on 3 days per week for 5 hours each day. Normally when i take him, he just wanders in and starts joining in with the other kids, but after having a couple of weeks break over Christmas he wasn't so keen. The first day he wasn't keen, but after joining in an activity with him for a few minutes he was happy to stay. On the second day he also wasn't keen and clung to me a bit more, so after trying to persuade him, I gave him the choice and he chose to go home, which was fine. The interesting thing was that on the way home he was so much more articulate than usual .. maybe he understood that his opinion is valued. It was quite a change in a few minutes. When we got home his mum asked him why he didnt want to go and he answered with a sentance about 12 words long.. i wish i could remember it verbatim , it was really amazing. When our sons reach 6 or 7 years old, they have to (as in get kidnapped if not) go to school. We want to find a school that treats them with the respect they deserve. We have to look in to this now, because it is very likely we have to move house and may have to emigrate to a freer country. We like the Montessori style and how it should work in theory, but the Swedish government have a very detailed school plan dictating what so called 'free' schools have to do. This makes it hard for schools to stick to the Montessori approach and still get good grades or government approval... i have even found myself looking for schools with poor grades, but i don't think this is the way. We are planning to visit a few small schools on our shortlist and are trying to work out the right questions to ask the person in charge. So far i have the following, but we would appreciate more ideas and criticism. 1 - What happens when a child doesn't want to do something a teacher asks him to do ?2 - How do you deal with the contradiction betweem the government school plan and the Montessori methods ?3 - If a child wants to learn something that is not part of the curriculum, how will you help him ?4 - How much of the day is spent with people who are not the same age ? Thanks for reading. Paul