QUESTION: I've read that it is possible to teach four-year-old children to read. Should I be working on this with my child?

DR. DOBSON: If a preschooler is particularly sharp, and if he can learn to read without feeling undue adult pressure, it might be advantageous to teach him this skill. Those are big "ifs," however. Few parents can work with their own children without showing frustration over natural failures.

Besides this limitation, learning should be programmed at the age when it is most needed. Why invest unending effort in teaching a child to read when he has not yet learned to cross the street, tie his shoes, count to 10, or answer the telephone? It seems foolish to get panicky over preschool reading, as such.

The best policy is to provide your children with many interesting books and materials, to read to them and answer their questions and then to let nature take its unobstructed course.

QUESTION: I have a friend who was married for nine years before her husband left her for another woman. I think she was a loving and devoted wife, yet she seemed to feel that the break-up of her marriage was her fault. As a result, her self-esteem disintegrated and she has never recovered.

DR. DOBSON: It has always been surprising for me to observe how often the wounded marriage partner - the person who was clearly the victim of the other's irresponsibility - is the one who suffers the greatest pangs of guilt and feelings of inferiority.

How strange that the one who tried to hold things together in the face of obvious rejection often finds herself wondering, "How did I fail him? ... I just wasn't woman enough to hold my man ... I am 'nothing' or he wouldn't have left ... if I only had been more exciting as a sexual partner ... I drove him to it ... I wasn't pretty enough ... I didn't deserve him in the first place. "

The blame for marital disintegration is seldom the fault of the husband or the wife alone. "It takes two to tango," as they say, and there is always some measure of shared blame for a divorce. However, when one marriage partner makes up his mind to behave irresponsibly to become involved extramarital, or to run away from his family commitments and obligations, he usually seeks to justify his behavior by magnifying the failures of his spouse.

By increasing the guilt of his partner in this way, he reduces his own culpability. For a husband or wife with low self-esteem, these changes and recriminations are accepted as fact when hurled his way. "Yes, it was my fault. I drove you to it. " Thus, the victim assumes the full responsibility for his partner's irresponsibility, and self-worth shatters.

I would not recommend that your friend sit around hating the memory of her husband. Bitterness and resentment are emotional cancers that rot us from within. However, if I were counselling her, I would encourage her to examine the facts carefully. Answers to these questions should be sought: Despite my human frailties, did I value my marriage and try to preserve it?

Did my husband decide to destroy it, and then seek justification for his actions?

Was I given a fair chance to resolve the areas of greatest irritation?

Could I have held him even if I had made all the changes he wanted?

Is it reasonable that I should hate myself for this thing that has happened?

Your friend should know that social rejection breeds feelings of inferiority and self-pity in enormous proportions. And rejection by the one you love, particularly, is the most powerful destroyer of self-esteem in the entire realm of human experience. She might be helped to see herself as the victim of this process, rather than a worthless failure at the game of love.