Will Reading to Liam Make Him a Genius?

I have the books that I would like to read to Liam already planned out. I’ll most likely start with The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkein and then I’ll move onto the Harry Potter series. From there I might hit up the Lord of the Rings trilogy and then I might find something new and exciting that I didn’t read religiously when I was a teen. Perhaps some classic literature might do him some good. Why do I want to do this though? Does reading to a baby really make them smarter, or is this more for Mummy’s sake?

Perhaps reading to him from the start won’t make him smarter as such, but research has shown that the earlier babies are exposed to reading, the better they perform in school. Reading to baby also is a great way for family members to bond with bub. Well, awesome! That is more than enough reason for me to read my favourite books to an unresponsive blob! Not only will I be bonding with my little man, but he will be gaining some invaluable skills to help him when he’s older.

I have another, more pressing reason for wanting Liam to be comfortable and familiar with words at a young age though. His father has Dyslexia. My husband is one of the smartest people I know, but he was severely disadvantaged at school.  While I know that Dyslexia is a learning disability that can happen to people of any intelligence level, I’m hoping that by surrounding Liam with words from the start it will help him work through the disability should he be unfortunate enough to inherit it from his father.

According to Wikipedia, there is no cure for Dyslexia, but that doesn’t mean that sufferers are destined  to a life where reading and writing is an impossibility:

There is no cure for dyslexia, but dyslexic individuals can learn to read and write with appropriate education or treatment. There is wide research evidence indicating that specialized phonics instruction can help remediate the reading deficits. The fundamental aim is to make children aware of correspondences between graphemes and phonemes, and to relate these to reading and spelling. It has been found that training, that is also focused towards visual language and orthographic issues, yields longer-lasting gains than mere oral phonological training.

I’ll be honest, I have no freakin’ clue what half that quote means, but it does give me hope that regardless of the outcome, Liam won’t be disadvantaged when he’s old enough to attend school. I imagine that I’ll be spending a lot of time working with him to overcome obstacles that most kids don’t face and that both he and I may want to kill each other (If I fail at keeping it fun or he gets bored), but I really believe its worth it! It may not make him a genius, but it will give him a head start that may be more important than any of us realise.

Are You Christening Your Child for the Right Reasons?

Before I get into the crux of this story, I should probably clarify where I stand on religion and all things associated with it. I believe that maybe there is someone out there, I just can’t relate to organised religions. Churches creep me out and the way they’re ran like businesses just doesn’t seem right. I have nothing against those that do follow organised religion and I respect their choices. It just isn’t for me.

The only Christening I’ve ever been to was when I was 19 and it was my first experience in a church. There was something about promising a whole bunch of stuff on behalf of a child who could barely even hold their head up which was quite unsettling to me. I left that place with a sour taste in my mouth and I vowed that no child of mine would ever have to go through that.

Last week my husband received an invite from one of his close friends to attend their newborn daughter’s Baptism this Sunday. These people are not religious at all, and the only reason why they are doing this is so that she has a clear passage into a private school just like her older siblings. They think religion and everything associated with it is a crock of shit, and yet they have made promises in a Church on behalf of their children that they will fear God and love thy neighbour. Its a small thing to do to ensure that your child has the best possible education though, right?

I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, its meaningless and so they have no issue with it, but on the other hand they have made a promise that their kids will follow the Christian way and are happy to have them raised with the Bible. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t considered getting Liam dunked in some water in order to get him into a decent school, but the fact remains that a good part of his school time would be spent learning about a belief system that I may not necessarily like or agree with. That, and I don’t like making promises I can’t keep.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a debate if public schools weren’t being shafted when it came to resources. A survey done by The Australian Education Union showed that 78 per cent of participants agreed that public schools were doing a good job but were under-resourced. Some parents are even so desperate to get their kids out of the public education system that they resort to trading cash for classes. Is getting your child Baptised or Christened for a chance to enrol at a better school the same as bribing someone?

I know that Liam is a long way off from school age, but his education is something very important to me. I just don’t know how far I’m willing to go to ensure that he gets the best education possible.