Reading for Your 2-Year-Old

Now Is the Right Time!

As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play an essential role in your child’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-child relationship from the start, and supporting your child’s development now in ways that will help them read when they are older is a great way to do it.

Preparing to learn to read begins as early as possible, long before your child can read a word on a page. Young children begin to recognize the print around them on signs, logos, candy wrappers, and cereal boxes. No matter what age, it is always good to build a habit of reading books together, and there are many other things you can do to develop early reading skills as well.

Reading skills are grown by talking and singing with your child, playing rhyming games together, noticing the print in your environment all around you, and reading to your child often to build their vocabulary and knowledge about the world.

Children are naturally eager to learn and are interested in letters and sounds, particularly letters that are important to them (like the first letter of their name). The early years are the right time for developing language skills, playing with sounds, and enjoying books together so children will be ready for reading in the future.

Throughout the early years, your child turns to you to help them figure out what is important to pay attention to. When you fill your child’s day with talking, singing, rhyming, and reading, they learn that language is important. Your child is interested in your voice, the words you choose, the rhythms of your speech, the songs you sing, and the books you love. Preparing to learn to read begins with fun with words, sounds, and you.

The steps below include specific, practical strategies and conversation starters to help you have fun with your child while growing their language skills and building a reliable, unconditional support and love relationship.

Why Reading?

Your child’s experiences, including singing, rhyming, and playing with you, are essential for developing a healthy brain, growing creativity skills, learning about language and feelings, and strengthening their relationship with you. These experiences will also help them learn to read when they are older.

You can begin by exposing your child to songs, sounds, and books they can explore – even if that means chewing on them in the first years! As time passes, they will turn to you for new words and stories and connect language and reading with the joy they feel when they are having fun with you.

Today, in the short term, building a foundation for reading can create

• language skills that help your child communicate about their needs with you
• fun times with you as you learn new songs and stories together
• a love of learning that will encourage your child to explore and be curious

Tomorrow, in the long term, building a foundation for reading

• prepares your child for success in school
• provides a firm foundation for exploration, learning, and speaking up
• helps them identify thoughts, feelings, and challenges, which grows self-awareness
• helps them manage impulses so they can stay focused on the story or on the letter they are trying to write, which grows self-management
• helps them become more socially aware as they learn how to take cues from others about how to use language together in games and songs
• helps them grow responsible decision-making skills as they learn good reading habits and they learn to ask for help when needed
• creates shared family stories, games, and memories

Five Steps for Building a Foundation for Reading

This five-step process helps you and your child develop a foundation that will help them learn to read when they are older. It also builds important critical life skills in your child. The same process can also be used to address other parenting issues (learn more about the process)
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Two-year-olds may use short phrases to communicate and may end up frustrated that they don’t know all the words to express their feelings. Paying close attention to your child’s facial expressions, body movements, and sounds helps you better understand what they are trying to communicate.

Your efforts to learn from your child build trust and create empathetic interactions that let them know you are interested in their thoughts. This will make a big difference in setting the stage for early reading. Your child will give you many cues about what they are ready to learn. Every child is different, and your child may change daily how willing they are to sing new songs, have conversations, and listen to new stories.

You are getting to know your child’s cues and are learning to anticipate if talking about letters, reading more stories, or any other experience is right for today. Is your child feeling particularly tired? Did they just get hurt, or are they hungry? Knowing how they are doing and what their facial expressions and body language mean will help you decide if an activity is right for your child right now.

In becoming sensitive to the nuances of your child’s verbal and nonverbal expressions, you

• show them that they can trust you to notice how they feel
• let them know that you will help them face challenges
• help them advocate for themselves if something feels like too much for right now or if they need more support
• let them know they can trust you to help them navigate what experiences are right for risk-taking and which ones are not
• deepen your ability to communicate with one another

Actions

• • Language development and relationship development set the stage for later reading success. Simple questions can be conversation starters to engage your child in using language with you, and they also tell your child that you care about what they think and how they feel. Each time there is an opportunity, ask your child questions and help with prompts as needed so they can be successful.

• “What do you notice? I notice…”

• “How do you feel? I feel…”

• “I wonder if the other person feels sad because their head is down. How do you think they might feel?”

• “What are you wondering? I am wondering what happens next.”  

• In addition, help your child notice and name their feelings to develop self-awareness and learn to trust their feelings. This includes describing and naming the pride they may feel when they have flipped through the pages of a new book.
• For a two-year-old, you might ask them what they notice when you sing a song full of words that start with the letter “M.” Exaggerate the “M” sound and ask your child what happens when they press their lips together for each of these words. After you have paused and given them plenty of time to speak, you might share what you notice. Allowing plenty of wait time after you ask your child questions is critical for ensuring they have time to get their thoughts and words together and say everything they would like to say.

Two-year-olds are learning to engage in healthy relationships through loving interactions, which include growing skills to help them learn how to read when they are older. Skill building takes intentional practice. Learning about developmental milestones can help a parent better understand what their child is experiencing.¹

• 2-year-olds are just beginning to recognize a few letters and numbers.
• 2-year-olds are expanding their vocabulary rapidly and will be able to say 200-250 words by age three.
• 2-year-olds will be eager to engage in imaginative play and, at times, cooperative play with other children. Through play, children gain vital practice with all of their developmental milestones.
• 2-year-olds are highly active with short attention spans.

Teaching is different than just telling. Teaching builds basic skills, grows problem-solving abilities, and prepares your child for success. Teaching also involves modeling and practicing the positive behaviors you want to see, promoting skills, and preventing problems.

Actions²

• If your child is looking at their name written on a piece of paper, you might trace the first letter with your finger to draw attention to it and say, “I notice that you are looking at the first letter. That is your letter ‘S.’ It is the tallest letter in your name and wiggles back and forth like this (tracing it again). Would you like to put your finger on it and see how it wiggles?” You might even name the expressions and body language you notice. “I see that you smile when you trace your letter ‘S.’ That letter is special because it is the first letter in your name.” When another family member or friend comes to your house, ask your child if they want to show their special letter. They will feel a sense of pride when they can eventually find it all by themselves.
• Check out storytimes or other activities for children at your local library. These activities help children play with words and sounds and develop a love for books and reading.
• Read and “pretend play” together. Read books together during the day, as part of your bedtime routine, or when pretending to be a librarian and leading a storytime for all of your child’s stuffed animals. Pretending to read is a wonderful way to experience what it will feel like to be a reader and to get a glimpse of the sense of pride and confidence that will come with it.
• Make your thinking and feelings explicit. Talk about what you notice, how you feel, why you feel it, and what signs you are giving. “I have so much fun singing songs together with you. Sometimes, you pick them, and sometimes I pick them. My favorite times are when we dance while we are singing!”
• Talk aloud about how you respond to your own big feelings: “That story made me feel a little bit sad, but then you gave me a hug, and I felt a lot better.”
• Cultivate a love of playing with language and stories. This might include sharing funny poems and making silly faces every time you make a rhyme.

Your daily routines are opportunities for your child to practice new vital skills. With practice, your child will improve over time as you give them the chance with support. Practice grows vital new brain connections that strengthen (and eventually form habits) each time your child works hard toward a goal or demonstrates belief in themselves.

Practice also provides important opportunities to grow self-efficacy – a child’s sense that they can do a task successfully. This leads to confidence. It helps them understand that mistakes and failures are part of learning.

Talk, sing, rhyme, read, and play are important ways to build a foundation for reading.

Actions

• Keep books within reach so your child can enjoy them when they choose.
• Use books, songs, rhymes, and games at home that allow children to hear examples of language and sounds around them. For example, they can record themselves and their loved ones with a voice recorder and then listen to the recording again.
• Use your child’s dolls or stuffed animals to act out moments of enjoying language and reading. This is a good way to practice what it feels like to be a reader and to build that part of your child’s identity. You can name the feelings that the doll might feel when your child pretends to read a book. “Does the doll like reading with you? I wonder if the doll wants to take a turn sitting in the reading chair.”
• Notice and acknowledge when your child recognizes logos, signs, symbols, letters, and numbers when you are out and about. You can take advantage of all of this print your child sees and talk about the letters, words, and sounds. You can play the traffic sign game, where your child points out traffic signs as you drive. These different symbols, logos, and print recognition are the start of their emerging reading ability.
• Provide opportunities for your child to use language and words in a way that is just a bit more challenging than what they have done before. The goal is to develop experiences beyond those with which they are comfortable. If they have already heard you read a favorite book to them many times, ask them if they would like to turn the pages when you read. Since they have so much experience with the book, they will not need to read the words to know when to turn the pages. Make sure it is a well-known book so this can feel like a successful experience.

At this point, you’ve engaged in various activities to get them excited and build a foundation for reading. You allow your child to practice so they can learn and grow.

Now, you can offer continued positive support. This support encourages your child to keep learning to read, which is a fun activity. Now is not the time to focus on correcting or getting things right. Now is the time to generate excitement and positive feelings about language and reading.

Actions

• Recognize effort by using “I notice…” statements like: “I noticed that you opened the new book from the library and looked at the pictures. I love seeing that.”
• On days with extra challenges, when your child is not interested in talking or reading as much, that’s OK. Don’t let reading become a chore.
• Actively reflect on your child’s feelings when playing with language and words. You can offer reflections like:
  • “I notice you make the Mmm sound every time the M comes up in the song. That is my favorite part, too, because it is so silly.” 
  • Build reading and songs into your daily routines and comment on how important those parts of your routine are. “I noticed you feel much more relaxed during bedtime after reading two books together. Reading books together feels good to me, too.”

No matter how old your child is, your positive reinforcement and encouragement have a significant impact.

If your child is working to grow their skills – even in small ways – it will be worthwhile to recognize it. Your recognition can go a long way in promoting positive behaviors and expanding your child’s confidence. Your recognition also promotes safe, secure, and nurturing relationships — a foundation for strong communication and a healthy relationship with you as they grow.

There are many ways to reinforce your child’s efforts. It is essential to distinguish between three types of reinforcement: recognition, rewards, and bribes. These three distinct parenting behaviors have different impacts on your child’s behavior.

Recognition occurs after you observe the desired behavior in your child. Noticing and naming the specific behavior you want to reinforce is key to promoting more of it. For example, “You practiced tracing the S in your name—I love seeing that!”  Recognition can include nonverbal acknowledgment, such as a smile or hug.

 

Rewards can be helpful in certain situations by providing a concrete, timely, and positive incentive for doing a good job.   A reward is determined beforehand so the child knows what to expect, like “If you listen to the story, we will get a treat when we are done.” (If you XX, then I’ll XX.) It stops any negotiations in the heat of the moment.  A reward could be used to teach positive behavior or break a bad habit. The goal should be to help your child progress to a time when the reward will no longer be needed. If used too often, rewards can decrease a child’s internal motivation.

Unlike a reward, bribes aren’t planned ahead of time and generally happen when a parent or someone in a parenting role is in the middle of a crisis (like in the grocery store checkout line and a child is having a tantrum. To avoid disaster, a parent offers to buy a sucker if the child will stop the tantrum). While bribes can be helpful in the short term to manage stressful situations, they will not grow lasting motivation or behavior change and should be avoided.

Actions

• Recognize and call out when things are going well. It may seem obvious, but it’s easy not to notice when everything is moving along smoothly. Noticing and naming the behavior provides the necessary reinforcement that you see and value your child’s choice.

• Recognize small steps along the way. Don’t wait for significant accomplishments—like the full bedtime routine going smoothly—to recognize effort. Remember that your recognition can work as a tool to promote more positive behaviors. Find small ways your child is making an effort and let them know you see them.
• Build celebrations into your routine. For example, after getting through your bedtime routine, snuggle and read before bed. Or, in the morning, once ready for school, take a few minutes to listen to music together.

Closing

Engaging in these five steps is an investment that will strengthen your skills as an effective parent or someone in a parenting role on many other issues and develop essential skills that will last a lifetime for your child. Through this tool, children can learn to love reading from the very beginning.