Dr. Stanley Goldstein - Author and Psychologist

That most children should be able to read when beginning kindergarten is well known by psychologists though this depends on their earlier experience. Parents should begin reading to their toddlers about the age of 2 1/2, having them sit beside them and running the parent's finger along the lines as they read. If done, most children will be able to read simple books by the time they start school.

They do this by using the same inborn cognitive mechanism that they used to learn the grammatical structure of the language of the country into which they were born. Thus a child born in Spain naturally learns to speak Spanish and a child born in France naturally learns to speak French, not by memorizing the placement of one word after the other which would be impossible, but by inducting the grammatical structure of the language. Similarly, a young child, if provided a helpful experience with reading, will induct its nature and learn to read.

No expensive gadgets are necessary for this critical childhood achievement, just simple books and willing parents. Try it.

"You don't live forever" is a well-worn phrase though one which isn't thought by the emotionally ill for whom daily survival is priority. The unconscious is powerful and prioritizes pain reduction above all else, reality and self-awareness being secondary. Its powerful weapons of anxiety and fear hone and direct behavior at the ignoring of the reality which is obvious to others.

An organized sense of self, sense of who one is, which originates with the childhood experience of a "good-enough" parenting, is needed to experience time passing and wasted years. Like the addict whose world has become reduced to gaining their next "fix" or those surviving a mortal illness, the sensing of time has become absent. Only with greater health can they rejoin the universal human quest for individual fulfillment.