Reading, calm screens, and the early years
Plain, honest guides for parents of young children, grounded in research.
The parent guide
Motivation & balance
How motivation actually works in young children
Rewards are easy to start and hard to stop. What actually keeps a young child going is quieter, and far more durable.
Reclaiming the hours: what a childhood is actually for
Between school, homework and activities, very little of a childhood is left unspoken for. The hours that remain are not spare. They are the point.
Early learning
How young children actually learn
Four ideas explain most of what works in early learning, and most of what does not.
Why early maths predicts more than you would think
If early literacy is the better-known story, early mathematical thinking may be the more surprising one: across large studies, the maths a child brings to the school door predicts later achievement more strongly than early reading does.
How children learn about choices, and why it counts
Alongside reading and maths sits a quieter third foundation: coming to understand that people act on purpose, choosing between options and weighing what things cost, to reach ends they care about.
What is phonemic awareness (and why it comes before phonics)
One of the strongest predictors of how well a child will learn to read has nothing to do with letters at all. It happens entirely by ear.
Early maths at home: building number sense before school
Early maths isn’t worksheets and sums. It’s a way of noticing the world, and it grows fastest in the kitchen, on walks, and at bath time.
Learning to read
How to teach a 4-year-old to read (without drills or pressure)
You do not need a curriculum, flashcards, or a tense half-hour after dinner. Early reading is built from small, playful, everyday moments, here is the shape of it.
What is synthetic phonics?
If your child is at a UK school, they are almost certainly learning to read this way. Here is what the term actually means, without the jargon.
Is my child ready to read? Signs to look for
Reading readiness is not a birthday. It is a small cluster of skills, and most of them show up in play long before any letter does.
What are decodable books, and why do they matter?
Your child comes home with a thin little book that uses oddly simple words. That is a decodable reader, and it is doing something very deliberate.
Why phonics starts with s, a, t, p, i, n
It looks random, but the order schools teach letter-sounds in is carefully chosen, and the first six letters are the reason children can read words within days.
Sight words vs phonics: should my child memorise words?
Memorising word cards feels like fast progress. Mostly, it isn’t, but there’s a small, real place for it. Here’s the honest picture.
Reading milestones from 3 to 7 (and why the range is so wide)
A rough map of how reading usually unfolds, offered as reassurance, not a schedule to measure your child against.
When should a child start writing? Handwriting readiness
Before a child can form letters, their hands need to be ready, and the best preparation looks nothing like writing.
Screens & childhood
Choosing well
Everyday life
How to help a child who doesn’t want to read
When reading has become a fight, the fix is almost never more pressure. It’s usually the opposite.
The quiet power of a bedtime reading routine
Of all the things you can do for a young child’s learning, ten minutes of a bedtime story is among the simplest and the most powerful.
Raising a reader in two languages
Raising a child with two languages is a gift, not a complication, including when it comes to learning to read.
Nothing matches that yet. Try another word.
From our desk to yours.
- Screen time is not one thing
Ten calm minutes of learning is not an hour of autoplay. Judge it by how they are afterwards.
- Ten quiet minutes
A short read on most nights beats a long push on a few.
- When a wrong answer stings
A mistake is the next step, never a failure.
- No such thing as behind
Compare your child to last week, never to the class.
- Follow the question
When they ask why, you have already won.
- Let them re-read it
The tenth read is not a rut. It is fluency being built.