There isn't an app for that.

My director came across a conversation on Facebook the other day, where a parent asked for suggestions on how to help her elementary-school aged child learn her sight words better. (If you aren’t in elementary school yet, sight words are a pre-designated list of words that kindergartners and first-graders are required to memorize. They are frequently used words that are not necessarily ones that you can sound out, but rather must simply remember. For example, “the.”) Each level in elementary school has a list of these words, and the children are expected to have the list memorized by the end of the year (but often pressured to learn them sooner, with incentives such as public recognition, certificates, and even prizes for learning them early).  The replies that came back to her were one hundred percent suggestions of various apps available on phones and tablets that are designed just to help kids learn the stuff they are required to know in school.

As she and I read this Facebook comment thread, we though how sad! Sad in so many ways. First of all, sad that the four- five- and six-year-old kids have these lists of words they have to sit down and concentrate and review and remember. Sad that so many kids are having a hard time learning them (which to me, means they simply aren’t ready yet. Kids are AMAZING at learning. They master the grammar and verb tenses of the English Language by the age of two or three. They learn how to walk, run, jump, and climb. They can do puzzles, tell stories, and manipulate their parents. They will learn everything they need to learn, when they are ready!). Sad that the people replying to this question only thought of apps as answers to this issue. I wish some of the people in this conversation could spend just one day in our preschool. We have a million and one ways to teach kids new concepts, and I have never seen a child using an app in our school.

Let’s back up a minute here. Before we talk about what kids learn and how they learn it best, I think we need to look at our goals. What do we want them to learn?

Take a minute, and try to picture your son or daughter as a young adult. He or she is heading out into the wide world for the first time. Who do you hope your child is? Successful in what ways? Take a minute to think about it. Then continue reading.

…

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Okay, ready?

Did you think of things like:

I want my child to be happy.

I want my child to be self-sufficient.

I want my child to be kind.

…  to be successful with a good career path.

… to be doing what he or she loves.

… to be surrounded by good people.

… to contribute to society.

… to be loved.

I bet you didn’t think, “I want my child to be a good reader.” Or “I want my child to be the smartest kid in the class.” Or “I want my child to be making x amount of dollars.”

So let’s take time, when our children are still young, to work on what we really want to work on.

Recently a farmer I know compared raising kids to pruning his peach trees. In the winter, he prunes his trees in such a way that saves those branches that will produce the best fruit, so that in summer his yield is maximized.  He likens that to raising kids, in that you figure out what they are good at, and you help them become the best version of themselves that you can.

Isn’t that really what we want? To find out what they love, and to help them succeed at it? Expose your kids to as many experiences as you can. Let them try new sports, art, music, museums, photography, cooking, and anything else you can. Find out what they love. Then help them do that thing.

So how does this relate back to sight words and learning?

Well, for one thing, I want to remind you that it will all come in good time. I have three kids: Two were “early” readers, one was a “late” reader. It really didn’t make a difference. I bet you don’t even know if you yourself were an early reader or not. Plenty of studies show that kids all balance out by about 3^rd grade, and that is exactly what happened to my kids. All of them were right where they needed to be in 3^rd grade.

I have a friend who moved to a different country, where the kids are taught reading at a much later age than they are here in the USA. Her older son had attended kindergarten here, where he learned to read. When they moved, he was far ahead of his classmates (academically), who had spent kindergarten playing. She was worried that the education system would continue to keep his peers (and him) behind American kids. However, when he returned to The United States in 7^th grade, he was far ahead of the classes he was put into. The school where he attended 1^st-6^th grades took kids, taught them to read much later than we do, and still got them way ahead of our kids by the end of 6^th grade. They wait until the kids are more ready, and the kids learn it all very quickly.

But since most of us aren’t planning to relocate to a different country for our kids’ formative years, we do have to help them work in our American school system.

So we have to find that balance between what our kids are capable of, and what the schools expect of them. (And let’s face it: our friends, their kids, our nieces and nephews, people on Facebook, and other kids in the grocery store. It’s so hard not to want your child keep pace with everyone else). I bet that if you look around at the friends your child has made at school, you wouldn’t be able to guess who had been an early talker, and who hadn’t. By the time your child is 9, you won’t be able to guess who had been an early reader.

The public schools are required to teach certain concepts to kids in certain grades. That includes reading in kindergarten, and it doesn’t change much from there. I have had my fair share of hours spent working with my kids on spelling lists, math facts, site words, and more, in every grade.

What can you do? Help your child learn what the school wants them to learn, because it can be so hard on the kids if they feel like they aren’t succeeding. But do it in ways that your child doesn’t hate it. My son and I used to do so many different things to remember those darn spelling words. I would put all the letters on post-it notes on the sidewalk, and we would race to touch the letters, in order, of particular words. I would trace the letters onto his back while he guessed the letters and the word, and then we would switch. I put the letters on the floor and had him jump from one space to the next. We tapped into what he loved to do (mostly run, jump, climb, and tumble), and used that to help him learn what he had to learn.

I didn’t ever use apps on my phone. This was a personal decision, but for me there are so many reasons to limit screen time. For one thing, I found that apps were either very helpful (but not fun), or very fun (but he spent more time building the rocket than actually doing the spelling). Guess which apps he wanted to use? (Hint: It wasn’t the not-fun ones). For another thing, I find technology to be addicting, at least for my kids. My kids have a hard time putting it away once they are started. I strictly limit their time, but when the time is up, I am met with way more whining and grumbling than I care to deal with. My kids also have a tough time coming back to the real world after they leave the digital world. They stay cranky for a while. And it is so easy to slip into letting the kids use technology when it is convenient for us. I see lots of kids on smart phones and tablets, when they have to sit still in a restaurant, drive in a car, and wait in a waiting room. I know it is so much easier for them and for you, and it passes the time so quickly, but there are so many different ways to spend that time!

One more quick story: One time, when my daughter was about 3, we were driving home from Lake Tahoe. If you’ve every driven down the 395, you know it is hundreds of miles of nothing. The sides of the road are lined with sand and rocky hills, almost nothing grows, and there are virtually no buildings, towns, or even off-ramps to break up the view. In other words, it’s not a destination. So, we were driving along, a few hours into our trip home, when my daughter said from the backseat, “I love this place!” After we cracked up and wondered what was wrong with her, we asked why she loved it. She said “That cloud looks like an elephant, and that one looks like a boat, and that mountain looks like a turtle.” She was simply enjoying her view, using her imagination, and thinking about the kinds of things that two-year-olds think about. None of that would have happened if we had a movie or an app in front of her.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do use technology sometimes. It’s not evil, and it’s not terrible. It has a place, and we could hardly survive without it these days. I just hate to see it replacing direct human interaction, especially for young children. They can’t learn to share, to wait patiently. However, that having been said, there are days when the backseat fighting wears me down, or I need a while to concentrate on what I’m doing, or I need one kid to sit still while I take care of another one. But I do find that what they accomplish when they are dealing with reality, is so much more than what they really get out of a screen.

Remember all the things you want for your child? They will become good people by talking with you and learning from you. They will learn empathy and sympathy, they will discover what they love, they will create so many memories.