Help Stop Depriving USA Children of Ability to Read

We need to be the heroes for USA at-risk child literacy deprivation. We need rescue workers to reach every parent in every home where an at-risk child lives and intervene while there is still time. There is a destructive force running rampant in our land: children ignored and unhelped whose lives are severely damaged by lack of understanding of those near and far from them.
No buildings are collapsing on them, but precious windows of establishing learning skills often slam closed on them before they get help.
Many USA children today are left unhelped and become situationally disabled, at-risk to fail. Depriving children of the ability to read, and comprehend simple directions is a serious matter. Awareness of the deprivation and its lifelong handicap is an issue we need to address out of our compassion.
With all our work and awareness gained of the appalling situation, Literacy for Tykes is shocked that 73% of USA adults polled thought at-risk kindergartners who have had no exposure to books , or being read to, will "Just catch up" in following years of school. SECA (Southern Early Childhood Association) and other early child educators see at-risk Kindergartners stay 2 years behind their agemates throughout their school years, and JumpStart DC states that they are 3 to 4 times more likely to drop out of school before graduation. SECA goes on to say that this reading difficulty contributes to school dropout, juvenile delinquency, substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, crime and overpopulated prisons.

Roughly 12 million kids, birth through 5 years in USA grow up without books. SECA estimates 3 million of those are in 14 SE states. As high as 56% of kindergartners were at-risk to fail in literacy development in 2007 Minnesota Department of Education Survey, up from 50% in 2006.
These figures presented by well-established sources are alarming. The situation of the first five years of these children's lives renders them learning disabled.

Any attempts to remedy this condition are difficult after the age of 3-4 years. It is optimal to reach the child with introduction of simple skills before they enter a group class room experience where they are expected to know that pictures are representing real life objects, that sounds /words can correlate with specific pictures/objects, how to point at an object in a picture when it is named.

We believe many parents are disconnected from the power of their parental position to open up learning skills with their child. Many early child developmental studies show that the child learns best from their parent or other trusted adult (or older siblings). They do learn everything the parent or others show them, mimicking actions, learning what's expected to be part of the day's activities from what they see their life models do.

What are parents doing in the presence of their all-seeing little ones? What are care providers doing? We can think of many hurried, overloaded reasons for parents/care providers actions. Some such adults have never been read to when they were infant or toddlers. Some have "tired brains" with meeting daily schedules, doing all the "should"s or "want to"s. Maybe they don't even know that their little extremely conscious child is looking to them to figure out what's important in this life.

The irony is its takes just 20 minutes a day, following step-by-step guidelines, like those in Teddy Bear's Favorite Pictures, to read to their child, hopefully without a lot of distracting noise and activity. One daily time that can be very relaxing and enjoyable for both parent and child is 20 minutes right before bed time.

We have a plan of action to get books/ materials out to homes through educational and human service organizations who have identified at-risk families/children. Many such partners are requesting books and materials to distribute to these homes. They are happy to encourage parents to look at the Parent Points format, and read to their children daily. After 4 months and 8 months the partners give feedback results reports, so we can ever improve program quality. The orgainztions themselves do not have the funds for this vital program to meet the need.

To invest in helping at-risk children and empowering their parents to create brighter futures for their children, go to Literacy for Tykes Main Website link listed on the right side of this page. We welcome you to be LiFT heroes and get needed resources to these USA at-risk children while it will do the most good.