By the age of 3 the toddler’s brain has formed about 1,000 trillion pathways or synapses – about twice as many as his mom or dad have. The toddler’s brain is super dense and primed for learning. When a pathway is used repeatedly, it becomes permanent; a pathway used infrequently is lost. Read, talk and play with your children to keep those pathways open. Toddlers learn through speech how to apply grammar rules – ed endings, verb endings, possessives, plurals. Research shows that children in all cultures learn language in the same way and on a very similar timetable from birth to age four. Parents who talk and read to their toddlers during this pivotal time help them learn the rules of grammar and acquire a larger and richer vocabulary. A toddler’s vocabulary surges to around 3,000 words before age 5. They learn at the rate of 8 new words a day.

Please note that Mem Fox writes for parents of children without learning disabilities. So, for most children and families, her advice will be really good, but if there is a learning disability or a suspected learning disability, then the parents’ good work is still valuable, but may not play out in terms of the child learning to read. A learning disability can influence a child, years before they are formally identified as having a learning disability – at age 2, 3, 4 etc. Parents need to know what to look for and need to take Mem Fox’s stuff with that in mind. Some “high risk parents” have a learning disability or some other disability/barrier and their children often do as well. Telling these parents that if they do all of the right things their child will be a good reader is a bit of a set up. It is definitely good for language acquisition in general. Speaking, listening, vocabulary practice and fostering that love of books, learning and language, will also help but it may not necessarily mean that the child is a better reader in the short term if there is a learning disability.