Publisher Description

Glenn Doman has demonstrated time and time again that very young children are far more capable of learning than we ever imagined. He has taken his remarkable work -work that explores why children from birth to age six learn better and faster than older children do - and given it practical application. As the founder of The Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential, he has created home programmes that any parent can follow. "How To Teach Your Baby To Read" shows just how easy and pleasurable it is to teach a young child to read by providing skills that are basic to academic success. It explains how to begin and expand the reading programme, how to make and organise necessary materials, and how to more fully develop your child's reading potential. By following the simple daily programme in a relaxed and loving way, you will enable your child to experience the joy of learning - as have millions of children the world over. With "How To Teach Your Baby To Read", you can give your baby a powerful advantage that will last a lifetime.

Author Biography

Glenn Doman received his degree in physical therapy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1940. From that point on, he began pioneering the field of child brain development. In 1955, he founded The Institutes' world-renowned work with brain-injured children had led to vital discoveries regarding the growth and development of well children. The author has lived with, studied, and worked with children in more than one hundred nations, ranging from the most civilized to the most primitive. Doman is also the international best-selling author of six books, all part of the Gentle Revolution Series, including How To Teach Yor Baby To Read, How To Teach Your Baby Math, and How To Give Your Baby Encyclopedic Knowledge.Janet Doman is the director of The Institutes and Glenn's daughter. She was actively involved in helping brain-injured children by the time she was nine years old, and after completing her studies at the University of Pennsylvania, devoted herself to helping parents discover the vast potential of their babies and their own potential as teachers.

Table of Contents

A Special Word from the Authors Regarding This Third Edition Preface A Birthday Note for Our Parents 1. The Facts and Tommy 2. Tiny Children Want to Learn to Read 3. Tiny Children Can Learn to Read 4. Tiny Children Are Learning to Read 5. Tiny Children Should Learn to Read 6. Who Has Problems, Readers or Nonreaders? 7. How to Teach Your Baby to Read 8. The Perfect Age to Begin 9. What Mothers Say 10. On Joyousness Acknowledgments About the Authors Index Appendix

Long Description

This book explains how to begin and expand the reading program, how to make and organize necessary materials, andhow to more fully develop your child's reading potential.

Excerpt from Book

Beginning a project in clinical research is like getting on a train with an unknown destination. It''s full of mystery and excitement but you never know whether you''ll have a compartment or be going third class, whether the train has a diner or not, whether the trip will cost a dollar or all you''ve got and, most of all, whether you are going to end up where you intended or in a foreign place you never dreamed of visiting. When our team members got on this train at the various stations, we were hoping that our destination was better treatment for severely brain-injured children. None of us dreamed that if we achieved that goal, we would stay right on the train till we reached a place where brain-injured children might even be made superior to unhurt children. The trip has thus far taken a half-century. The accommodations were third class and the diner served mostly sandwiches, night after night, often at three in the morning. The tickets cost all we had, and while some of us did not live long enough to finish the trip none of us would have missed it for anything else the world has to offer. It''s been a fascinating trip. The original passenger list included a brain surgeon, a physiatrist (an M.D. who specializes in physical medicine and rehabilitation), a physical therapist, a speech therapist, a psychologist, an educator, and a nurse. Now there are more than a hundred of us all told, with many additional kinds of specialists. The little team was formed originally because each of us was individually charged with some phase of the treatment of severely brain-injured children--and each of us individually was failing. If you are going to choose a creative field in which to work, it is difficult to pick one with more room for improvement than one in which failure has been one hundred percent and success is nonexistent. When we began our work together over fifty years ago we had never seen, or heard of, a single brain-injured child who had ever gotten well. The group that formed after our individual failures would today be called a rehabilitation team. In those days so long ago, neither of those words were fashionable and we looked upon ourselves as nothing so grand as all that. Perhaps we saw ourselves more practically and more clearly as a group who had banded together, much as a convoy does, hoping that we would be stronger together than we had proved to be separately. We began by attacking the most basic problem that faced those who dealt with brain-injured children fifty years ago. This problem was identification. There were three very different kinds of children with problems who were invariably mixed together as if they were the same. The fact is that they were not even ninety-second cousins. They got lumped together in those days (and, tragically, they still are in much of the world) for the very poor reason that they frequently look, and sometimes act, the same. The three kinds of children who were constantly put together were deficient children with brains that were qualitatively and quantitatively inferior, psychotic children with physically normal brains but unsound minds, and finally truly brain-injured children who had good brains but which had been physically hurt. We were concerned only with the last type of children, who had suffered injuries to a brain that at conception was perfectly good. We came to learn that although the truly deficient child and the truly psychotic child were comparatively few in number, hundreds of thousands of children were, and are, diagnosed as deficient or psychotic, while they were actually brain-injured children. Generally such mistaken diagnoses came about because many of the brain-injured children incurred injuries to a good brain before they were born. When we had learned, after many years of work in the operating room and at the bedside, which children were truly brain-injured, we could then begin to attack the problem itself--the injured brain. We discovered that it mattered very little (except from a research point of view) whether a child had incurred his injury prenatally, at the instant of birth, or postnatally. This was rather like being concerned about whether a child had been hit by an automobile before noon, at noon, or after noon. What really mattered was which part of his brain had been hurt, how much it had been hurt, and what might be done about it. We discovered further that it mattered very little whether a child''s good brain had been hurt as a result of his parents having an incompatible Rh factor, his mother having had an infectious disease such as German measles during the first three months of pregnancy, insufficient oxygen having reached his brain during the prenatal period, or because he had been born prematurely. The brain can also be hurt as a result of protracted labor, by the child''s falling on his head at two months of age and suffering blood clots on his brain, by having a high temperature with encephalitis at three years of age, by being struck by an automobile at five years of age, or by any of a hundred other factors. Again, while this was significant from the research point of view, it was rather like worrying about whether a particular child had been hit by a car or a hammer. The important thing here was which part of the child''s brain was hurt, how much it was hurt, and what we were going to do about it. In those early days, the world that dealt with brain-injured children held the view that the problems of these children might be solved by treating the symptoms which existed in the ears, eyes, nose, mouth, chest, shoulders, elbows, wrist, fingers, hips, knees, ankles, and toes. A large portion of the world still believes this today. Such an approach did not work then and could not possibly work. Because of this total lack of success, we concluded that if we were to solve the multiple symptoms of the brain-injured child we would have to attack the source of the problem and approach the human brain itself. While at first this seemed an impossible or at least monumental task, in the years that followed we and others found both surgical and nonsurgical methods of treating the brain itself. We held the simple belief that to treat the symptoms of an illness or injury, and to expect the disease to disappear, was unmedical, unscientific, and irrational, and if all these reasons were not enough to make us abandon such an attack, then the simple fact remained that brain-injured children approached in such a manner never got well. On the contrary, we felt that if we could attack the problem itself, the symptoms would disappear spontaneously to the exact extent of our success in dealing with the injury in the brain itself. First we tackled the problem from a nonsurgical standpoint. In the years that followed, we became persuaded that if we could hope to succeed with the hurt brain itself we would have to find ways to reproduce in some manner the neurological growth patterns of a well child. This meant understanding how a well child''s brain begins, grows, and matures. We studied intently many hundreds of well newborn babies, infants, and children. We studied them very carefully. As we learned what normal brain growth is and means, we began to find that the simple and long-known basic activities of well children, such as crawling and creeping, are of the greatest possible importance to the brain. We learned that if such activities are denied well children, because of cultural, environmental, or social factors, their potential is severely limited. The potential of brain-injured children is even more affected. As we learned more about ways to reproduce this normal physical pattern of growing up, we began to see brain-injured children improve--ever so slightly. It was at about this time that the neurosurgical components of our team began to prove conclusively that the answer lay in the brain itself, by developing successful surgical approaches to it. There were certain types of brain-injured children whose problems were of a progressive nature, and these children had consistently died early. Chief among these were the hydrocephalics, the children with "water on the brain." Such children had huge heads due to the pressure of cerebrospinal fluid that could not be reabsorbed in the normal manner due to their injuries. Nevertheless the fluid continued to be created as in normal people. No one had ever been quite so foolish as to try to treat the symptoms of this disease by massage or exercise or braces. As the pressure on the brain increased these children had always died. Our neurosurgeon, working with an engineer, developed a tube which carried the excess cerebrospinal fluid from the reservoirs called the ventricles, deep inside the human brain, to the jugular vein and thus into the blood stream, where it could be reabsorbed in the normal manner. This tube had within it an ingenious valve that would permit the excess fluid to flow outward while simultaneously preventing the blood from flowing back into the brain. This almost magical device was surgically implanted within the brain and was called "the V-J shunt." The lives of more than twenty-five thousand children were saved by this simple tube. Many of these children were able to live completely normal lives and go to school with their peers. This was beautiful evidence of the complete futility of attacking the symptoms of brain injury, as well as the unassailable logic and necessity for treating the hurt brain itself. Another startling method will serve as an example of the many types of successful brain surgery that are in use today to solve the problems of the brain-injured child. There are actually two brains, a right brain and a left brain. These two brains are divided right dow

Introduction or Preface

Beginning a project in clinical research is like getting on a train with an unknown destination. It''s full of mystery and excitement but you never know whether you''ll have a compartment or be going third class, whether the train has a diner or not, whether the trip will cost a dollar or all you''ve got and, most of all, whether you are going to end up where you intended or in a foreign place you never dreamed of visiting. When our team members got on this train at the various stations, we were hoping that our destination was better treatment for severely brain-injured children. None of us dreamed that if we achieved that goal, we would stay right on the train till we reached a place where brain-injured children might even be made superior to unhurt children. The trip has thus far taken a half-century. The accommodations were third class and the diner served mostly sandwiches, night after night, often at three in the morning. The tickets cost all we had, and while some of us did not live long enough to finish the trip none of us would have missed it for anything else the world has to offer. It''s been a fascinating trip. The original passenger list included a brain surgeon, a physiatrist (an M.D. who specializes in physical medicine and rehabilitation), a physical therapist, a speech therapist, a psychologist, an educator, and a nurse. Now there are more than a hundred of us all told, with many additional kinds of specialists. The little team was formed originally because each of us was individually charged with some phase of the treatment of severely brain-injured children--and each of us individually was failing. If you are going to choose a creative field in which to work, it is difficult to pick one with more room for improvement than one in which failure has been one hundred percent and success is nonexistent. When we began our work together over fifty years ago we had never seen, or heard of, a single brain-injured child who had ever gotten well. The group that formed after our individual failures would today be called a rehabilitation team. In those days so long ago, neither of those words were fashionable and we looked upon ourselves as nothing so grand as all that. Perhaps we saw ourselves more practically and more clearly as a group who had banded together, much as a convoy does, hoping that we would be stronger together than we had proved to be separately. We began by attacking the most basic problem that faced those who dealt with brain-injured children fifty years ago. This problem was identification. There were three very different kinds of children with problems who were invariably mixed together as if they were the same. The fact is that they were not even ninety-second cousins. They got lumped together in those days (and, tragically, they still are in much of the world) for the very poor reason that they frequently look, and sometimes act, the same. The three kinds of children who were constantly put together were deficient children with brains that were qualitatively and quantitatively inferior, psychotic children with physically normal brains but unsound minds, and finally truly brain-injured children who had good brains but which had been physically hurt. We were concerned only with the last type of children, who had suffered injuries to a brain that at conception was perfectly good. We came to learn that although the truly deficient child and the truly psychotic child were comparatively few in number, hundreds of thousands of children were, and are, diagnosed as deficient or psychotic, while they were actually brain-injured children. Generally such mistaken diagnoses came about because many of the brain-injured children incurred injuries to a good brain before they were born. When we had learned, after many years of work in the operating room and at the bedside, which children were truly brain-injured, we could then begin to attack the problem itself--the injured brain. We discovered that it mattered very little (except from a research point of view) whether a child had incurred his injury prenatally, at the instant of birth, or postnatally. This was rather like being concerned about whether a child had been hit by an automobile before noon, at noon, or after noon. What really mattered was which part of his brain had been hurt, how much it had been hurt, and what might be done about it. We discovered further that it mattered very little whether a child''s good brain had been hurt as a result of his parents having an incompatible Rh factor, his mother having had an infectious disease such as German measles during the first three months of pregnancy, insufficient oxygen having reached his brain during the prenatal period, or because he had been born prematurely. The brain can also be hurt as a result of protracted labor, by the child''s falling on his head at two months of age and suffering blood clots on his brain, by having a high temperature with encephalitis at three years of age, by being struck by an automobile at five years of age, or by any of a hundred other factors. Again, while this was significant from the research point of view, it was rather like worrying about whether a particular child had been hit by a car or a hammer. The important thing here was which part of the child''s brain was hurt, how much it was hurt, and what we were going to do about it. In those early days, the world that dealt with brain-injured children held the view that the problems of these children might be solved by treating the symptoms which existed in the ears, eyes, nose, mouth, chest, shoulders, elbows, wrist, fingers, hips, knees, ankles, and toes. A large portion of the world still believes this today. Such an approach did not work then and could not possibly work. Because of this total lack of success, we concluded that if we were to solve the multiple symptoms of the brain-injured child we would have to attack the source of the problem and approach the human brain itself. While at first this seemed an impossible or at least monumental task, in the years that followed we and others found both surgical and nonsurgical methods of treating the brain itself. We held the simple belief that to treat the symptoms of an illness or injury, and to expect the disease to disappear, was unmedical, unscientific, and irrational, and if all these reasons were not enough to make us abandon such an attack, then the simple fact remained that brain-injured children approached in such a manner never got well. On the contrary, we felt that if we could attack the problem itself, the symptoms would disappear spontaneously to the exact extent of our success in dealing with the injury in the brain itself. First we tackled the problem from a nonsurgical standpoint. In the years that followed, we became persuaded that if we could hope to succeed with the hurt brain itself we would have to find ways to reproduce in some manner the neurological growth patterns of a well child. This meant understanding how a well child''s brain begins, grows, and matures. We studied intently many hundreds of well newborn babies, infants, and children. We studied them very carefully. As we learned what normal brain growth is and means, we began to find that the simple and long-known basic activities of well children, such as crawling and creeping, are of the greatest possible importance to the brain. We learned that if such activities are denied well children, because of cultural, environmental, or social factors, their potential is severely limited. The potential of brain-injured children is even more affected. As we learned more about ways to reproduce this normal physical pattern of growing up, we began to see brain-injured children improve--ever so slightly. It was at about this time that the neurosurgical components of our team began to prove conclusively that the answer lay in the brain itself, by developing successful surgical approaches to it. There were certain types of brain-injured children whose problems were of a progressive nature, and these children had consistently died early. Chief among these were the hydrocephalics, the children with "water on the brain." Such children had huge heads due to the pressure of cerebrospinal fluid that could not be reabsorbed in the normal manner due to their injuries. Nevertheless the fluid continued to be created as in normal people. No one had ever been quite so foolish as to try to treat the symptoms of this disease by massage or exercise or braces. As the pressure on the brain increased these children had always died. Our neurosurgeon, working with an engineer, developed a tube which carried the excess cerebrospinal fluid from the reservoirs called the ventricles, deep inside the human brain, to the jugular vein and thus into the blood stream, where it could be reabsorbed in the normal manner. This tube had within it an ingenious valve that would permit the excess fluid to flow outward while simultaneously preventing the blood from flowing back into the brain. This almost magical device was surgically implanted within the brain and was called "the V-J shunt." The lives of more than twenty-five thousand children were saved by this simple tube. Many of these children were able to live completely normal lives and go to school with their peers. This was beautiful evidence of the complete futility of attacking the symptoms of brain injury, as well as the unassailable logic and necessity for treating the hurt brain itself. Another startling method will serve as an example of the many types of successful brain surgery that are in use today to solve the problems of the brain-injured child. There are actually two brains, a right brain and a left brain. These two brains are divided right dow

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