Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Spontaneous reading?

This past weekend I was driving with DD9 (gifted) and DD4 (not gifted as best we can tell) and saw a sign with no pictures that read, "Free water sponsored by..." A few minutes later, I complained asking why it was so crowded, and DD4 said, "Maybe it's because of the free water."

DD9 and I did a double-take. Neither of us remembered saying anything about the sign that we both saw. We quizzed DD4 about how she knew about the free water and she said, "Because I just know'd."

We quizzed her a couple more times but she grew uncomfortable, yet gave the same answer. Finally, I bribed her with cookies if she agreed to tell the truth. She whispered in my ear, "Because I read'd it."

Later that night, I wrote "FREE WATER" on a piece of paper and she could not read it and became visibly frustrated.

DD9 and I are certain we said nothing about the sign, so was this some sort of unconscious reading DD4 did? At present DD4 does not know her entire alphabet and can only read and write her name.

My ds started reading really early (around 2 - the same time he was learning his letters). He completely taught himself to sight read. How we found out (he would read signs, but we figured he just memorized common sign shapes and font) was that, as we were scrolling through Tv shows (while you're still watching a program), he began shouting out which shows he wanted to watch. Have fun figuring out what other words she knows! We loved Starfall (.com?) For ds.

I had similar weird experiences with my DD, who was about that same age at the time. I was sure she could read, because she acted consistently with having understood something she'd been exposed to only in writing. But faced with a piece of paper, she was unable to read anything - not even "the" or "cat" - despite being desperate to learn to read.

She started kindergarten not reading, and a couple weeks in, something clicked, and she could read almost anything a few weeks after that. She has always been the kid who couldn't do it until out of the blue she could do it perfectly, and reading went that way, too.

That's really cute. Sounds like she read it, but doesn't want to be pressured even slightly (and I understand you weren't intentionally pressuring her). That means to me that she probably is ready to go forward with her reading, but might do better in the short term if she does it either entirely on the down-low, or else on her own.

One thing that my younger son has been enjoying is playing on starfall.com by himself, with a miniature mouse. This helps develop beginning computer skills (he's quite proud of them lol) and he can do whatever he likes, and in whatever order. Do you think that'd work for your daughter? If so, I'd take her to a local Staples or similar store and find a mouse that fits her hand well, if you don't already have one. I found that DS the younger was initially making a lot of misclicks due to the scroll wheel, so in retrospect I'd have tried to find one with just a couple of buttons on the top.

I tend to shudder at the sorts of electronic products that flash lights and beep at the user, but Fridge Phonics is another idea for letting her progress on her own. If you buy it, I'd make sure to get the lower-case letters and put the upper case for a while. A while back I bought the "Letter Factory" DVD by Leapfrog as well based on the consistently high reviews, and it was well received by DS (my only quibble with that one is the near-exclusive focus on the upper case alphabet).

I note that according to the set of facts you've given, the sign was in mostly lower case, but what you wrote was all upper case. Do you think that might've had something to do with her frustration?

My DD9 was an early reader and once she started preschool and realized that other kids her age couldn't read she started pretending she couldn't either. She went from reading and writing complete sentences (reading entire Dr. Suess books) at three to "not remembering" the sounds the letters made at four. Um, riiiight.

We managed to trick her out of it. My Dad said to her one day "please pass me that Coke" and she said "it's Pepsi." Dad: "no it's Coke!" DD: "nooo... it's PEPSI. See? P-e-p-s-i!" Dad looked at me and winked, and I remember thinking he still had some old parenting tricks up his sleeve ;p

Maybe later at home when your daughter couldn't read "free water" it was because she suddenly felt self conscious?

Well, it's possible she read it, and is uncomfortable showing her ability in front of you. It's also entirely possible she overhead OTHER people talking about it when you weren't paying attention.

I remember someone suggesting leaving a very generic box out somewhere that said "Free candy inside if you can read this." I thought that was sort of demonic but also kind of genius. I suppose it might work best if you did NOT put candy in it.

(Certainly they can learn to read pretty spontaneously. Both of mine did. I mean, they spent some timne with Starfall and Word World--well, only the second one watched that--but it was not at all an effortful teaching event.)

Thanks. It doesn't sound really unusual, and as one person suggested, we might have said something about it. It's just that DD9 was there and her memory is pretty flawless...

But anyway, thanks for the Starfall recommendaiton. The one reading game that DD4 does play is Clifford Phonics (old but great, BTW) so she might just be absorbing this stuff through that and cartoons. With DD9 we went through a reading course very deliberately.

Another poster pointed out that self-consciousness could have a lot to do with it, and DD4 is extremely sensitive and actually our "difficult child"...I would not be surprised if she ends up surprising us if the stats on IQ ranges and siblings are correct.

It could be that you previously have somehow said what the sign said and she remembered. Either way, either she can read some or she has an excellent memory!
My younger boy never seemed very gifted, LOL. He would conjugate verbs incorrectly, like say "I dood it" instead of "I did it" even at age 5!
When he was maybe 4 years old, I was rereading whatever book for the millionth time- he had me put the book down (which was a third grade level book) and he recited page after page verbatim with each word correct, without looking at it! LIke a 20 page book. I don't mean, he noticed when mommy skipped a word, he corrected me. I mean, he photographically knew every word on every page without looking at it.
He later got a 165 total IQ on the RIAS and a 99th percentile on the Raven's test, and he's in Mensa. (We haven't done other testing since for us, there is no point).
Anyway... so I suspect you are seeing somebody who is very bright.