Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Still not reading.....?

My HG girl, very verbal, montessori edu until recently...is still not reading. She has been exposed to books all her life, and just is not reading. It is odd.

She is 5.5yo.

We read to her many times per day, and she looks /listens to books on CD by herself all the time. Books are everywhere.

She did have beginning montessori phonics work at school, word blends, etc.

She can do some basic reading and sounding out, but it is slow and not fun for her. She is embarrassed, and does not want to read because she thinks she should be doing better.

It seems odd for a HG kid to not read at this age, I am not sure what is going on. We have not really pushed the issue, but I think it is time to work on it a bit more. We are homeschooling now.

Any suggestions? She is really enjoying the Epgy Math program, and I wondered if there was a similar reading program at that early reading level (epgy reading starts at 2nd grade, she is not there yet)

Any of you with late readers? I read so many posts with super early readers, but not many late/normal readers.

Thx...

My ODS was like this. His actual reading level was pretty much on average until the end of first grade. He preferred being read to and could comprehend books several grade levels higher. I wanted him to love books and reading so I gave him what he craved, more complex books that we read to him rather than forcing him to read boring simple books on his own (he did that at school). Eventually and quite suddenly his ability to decode and his fluency caught up to his comprehension. He was reading middle school level books by the spring of second grade. I say read whatever she wants you to read to her and don't worry about the nuts and bolts. That will come.

I also want to point out that she is not actually a late reader. She isn't behind. She just isn't ahead like you would expect. It also sounds like she has some perfectionism going on as my son did as well.

So glad you asked the question, as I am very happy to share my experience with this! My DYS 11-year-old daughter did not read until she was almost 7 years old. Her VCI on the WISC is 166. She always loved books, and even as a tiny toddler, would run to me with a book in her hand several times per day. She always wanted to be read to, and listened to many audiobooks from an early age. She was advanced in the kinds of books that she wanted read to her – sitting still for long periods even as a three-year-old to listen to chapter books.

We have always been relaxed homeschoolers, and I did very, very minimal phonics instruction with her, but not until later – maybe first grade. But she didn't pick up reading quickly. I mean, it wasn't like I showed her some phonics, and then she took off. She's a little tentative and perfectionistic by nature, and I think trying to read made her feel anxious. I began to push the issue gently as she neared her seventh birthday. I made her read some easy readers to me. She hated it. She is still the type of kid who doesn't like to do something that she's not good at.

By her seventh birthday, she was proudly reading frog and toad. Six months later, she was reading at a fifth grade level. But she wasn't early, and she wasn't self taught.

Sometimes I feel like the lone parent of a late reading gifted child. I think the fact that she didn't read early is in large part what made it hard for me to see her giftedness. I wonder how many more of us are out there!

I know you don't want to hear this but there could be a learning issue. If your gut tells you she should be doing better at reading, she probably should be.

I have twins. One read at age 3. The other, at 5, was still a long way off and he would tell me he worried that he would never learn to read. He also stopped wanting to try around that time because he was embarrassed. He was just as smart as his brother, so it didn't make sense.

I WISH I would have done something about it when he was 5, because he has dyslexia, and since he wasn't technically behind, I just let it go for 2 years. Plus, teachers told me not to worry about it. They were my first, so I took their advice, even though they were wrong. It would have saved 2 years of grief if he had been diagnosed, or if I had just started a reading program like Hooked on Phonics (which might have helped, but would have certainly shown me he had an issue.)

Once he was diagnosed, it took 2 years of intensive, expensive tutoring to bring him back up to where he should have been if he'd have started learning to read in K.

I would work with her this summer and if there's not progress, get her evaluated. The only reason I would suggested Hooked on Phonics is because it's a fun video aimed at young kids (I used it on my dd at age 3 to make sure she didn't have dyslexia and she was reading really well within a couple months.) By the time my son was diagnosed in 2nd grade, he thought it was too babyish (especially since his brother was such a great reader).

I would toss in here, to make sure her vision has been checked carefully. Some vision issues don't prevent the seeing and understanding of words, but make the individual letter identification much more difficult.

I just want to add to my earlier post. I believe it is either in Sweden or Norway that reading is not taught until age seven. Whichever country it is, they have one of the highest literacy rates in the world. Reading didn't used to be taught in kindergarten. A generation ago, reading wasn't taught until first grade. There is scads of research that shows that teaching kids to read early is not beneficial, and in fact may be harmful. Note that this is not relevant to kids who self teach early! Also, as an unschooler, I personally know many kids who were not taught to read, and didn't read until they were nine or 10, at which point they took off like rockets. Not something that I would've been comfortable with – waiting that long – however, I do wonder if our culture privileges early reading too much.

I am fairly certain that my second child is dyslexic, so there is something to that mother gut feeling. If it feels like something is wrong, then get it checked out. I'm just suggesting that not reading by five six doesnt necessarily mean there is a problem.

Gabalyn, your child sounds alot like mine. She loves books and listening, but the perfectionist thing may be getting in the way.

She also is so advanced on material...the type of book she is interested in (alice in wonderland, little women) is not what she is capable of reading herself.

She can sound things out, and does it well, so I dont think she has an auditory processing issue, and I just had her read letters to me on a small font printout, and she sees them all fine...

And, I did get a trial for a computer reading game to see if that sparks her interest a bit. We have not let her play with any screens until recently, no TV/videos etc, so any media is still pretty new and exciting for her.

We will go get her eyes checked though, since dad and I both wear glasses, should do it anyway.

Thanks for all your input!

My DD8 was not an 'early reader', once she cracked the code she just took off but she was *NOT* an early reader nor was she self taught. I wouldn't worry about it too much at this age. I couldn't read until 7ish myself and I cannot say that it ever held me back.

you are not alone!

DD5 only began reading 3 months ago, though her comprehension has always been... uh, quite good. (i still am kind of freaked out about some of the books i've read to her in the past few years - Far From the Tree/The Emperor of All Maladies/etc)

given the fact she could sound things out at 2... and then her crazy comprehension level, i honestly couldn't figure it out. even though i personally didn't care if it took a few more years, it was just really weird. she was always obsessed with books, but showed little to no interest in learning to read.

then... this year, she had a horrible year in Pre-K and i was really forced to figure some stuff out. as it turns out, it was a combination of the following:

1) she'd been actually preventing herself from reading - literally glazing over when confronted with any/all text in order to stop her brain from working it out. this stemmed from her fear of being different - she obviously worked out how different she was YEARS before i did.

2) because of her comprehension, the early reader material just seemed pointless to her - most of it is just atrocious. once i told her she could skip the school readers and read chapter titles/ newspaper headlines instead, this got a tiny bit better.

3) once we figured that out... her perfectionism still really stood in her way. she has always seen herself as a great lover of books, and hearing herself read aloud so haltingly started killing her love for it. we fixed that by letting her stay up 15 minutes later and just read on her own... she can now read from any of the Harry Potter books or Alice in Wonderland - it's slow, and she's still only doing a little bit at a time, but... three months ago you couldn't pay her to read so i'm calling this a win!

ps - Frog and Toad were our gateway books too, gabalyn - they're just so lovely.

Doubtfulguest, you make a good point about the early readers. If you've been eating up Diana Wynne Jones and Frances Hodgson Burnett as read alouds or audiobooks, Barbie easy readers are kinda depressing.

Your daughter is not late learning to read. ....One thing that I try to remind myself is that my twins will not be ahead in learning everything, but probably will master the subject more quickly once they start learning.

One of my twins taught himself to read at age 3; but the other didn't learn to read until he was 5.5 yrs old. He is quite a perfectionist, and wouldn't let us teach him at all, but started "reading" the Bob books to himself around that age. He wanted to learn by himself, just as his brother did, LOL, and couldn't be told otherwise.

When he was learning to read, he would just push himself through sounding out the words, alone, after he went to bed. When K started, he could sound out simple words, but that was it. Our K program really focuses on teaching reading, and once he started school, his reading skills progressed extremely quickly.

He can now read better than he thinks he can, though, as he will only read lower level easy reader books unless he is extremely interested in the topic. He thinks Frog and Toad has "too many words" but is reading Star Wars level 4 readers which are much more difficult.

He has chosen quite an assortment of different leveled books to read this summer for his summer reading, which is fine with me. As the summer has gone on, he has started to read "harder" books. And his twin, who can read at least middle school level, also enjoys the picture books written for their age groups. One minute he will be reading Dr. Seuss, but his next choice might be a science encyclopedia written for eighth graders.

Try to find a book series which really interests her. It took us reading "Captain Underpants" to get my early reader interested in reading fiction books, which was important because that is what the schools use to test comprehension. My boys both love Dr. Seuss. His books are easy to read, but seem to be more "clever" than most of the easy readers.

I'll chime in with another "she's not a late reader" post! Neither of my kids were "early" readers (in the sense that they were reading in preschool or before). And I didn't learn until I was 6yo. Not all gifted kids are early readers.

When DD was 5.5 she was still sounding a lot of words out and going very slowly. Now, a couple of months past turning 6, she can read a "Henry and Mudge" or "Mr. Putter" book with no problem (and has told me that they're getting too easy. Oh how I'll miss them!) It has really snowballed, but it was a slow start.

When DS was in kindergarten, he would insist (at home) that he couldn't read, or that certain books were too hard. I mentioned this to his teacher one day, and she told me, no, in fact he was reading at level E (or something like that). So for his-favorite teacher-in-the-world he would read, but not at home (either because of perfectionism, or because he knew I'd read to him and his sister no matter what). Is there another adult (or older child) she looks up to who can ask her to read?

Along the perfectionism lines, some libraries have a program where they bring in dogs for kids to read to. If she is feeling inhibited by perfectionism, that might be something to try.

It could be that you don't see many posts about normal or late readers because, well, there's nothing to post about. Early reading is often a sign of giftedness, so you see a lot of posts along the lines of "my child started reading magazines at 30mo, could he be gifted?" or "I knew my kid was gifted when he started reading what was on my laptop while in his highchair."

(FWIW, both my kids were in a Montessori preschool, which was heavy on the reading academics. If any of it stuck, they certainly kept it a secret until many months after leaving the school.)

Anecdotally, at least from several comments I've seen on this forum, the early readers are the ones who later turn out to be particularly strong in mathematics, rather than verbal skills. When tested at age 7, my early reading (at age 2) son was found to be PG in mathematics, but only MG in reading.

Gabalyn... you could have written this about my DS7! They sound remarkably similar.

Over 4 months, he went from essentially not reading to reading at the 5th grade level. In some ways, this doesn't surprise me. He's always been the kind of kid that wants to work out a whole bunch in his head first, and then later, when he "gets it," demonstrate competence as if he's been doing it for years. Learning to read has only been the most recent thing he's set his mind to.

FWIW, both my kids were very interested in reading/phonics/writing at age 4, and by 4 and a half or 5, knew all the letters and most of the sounds, and could recognize and write about half a dozen words, like their names, "mum", "dad", and "zoo"
But basically they started school at age 5 not really looking any different to anyone else. It wasn't until about 5 and a half they started pulling ahead, and were a year ahead by age 6.
By age 8 they're about 4 years ahead, and university level by 11. They're not especially mathematical.
So, not early readers, pretty much exactly on time readers, but then take off after that. Five and a half doesn't ring any alarm bells but it's great you're aware enough to jump on any problems if there are in fact any.

I wrote so many posts about this up till about 7 months ago. My DD was exactly the same, she's now reading Thea Stilton and eyeing up my Harry Potter. Basically she had it in her head that you read at 5. She couldn't really read at all when she started school, then it just clicked. She still had to go through all the levels (she wouldn't have been able to read Harry Potter in June) but each level was about 2 days.

One thing that really helped was making her do the practise books school sent home and also a lightly worded activity book that we just flat out refused to help her with. The first 4 weeks were meh, then wow.

I think there is something visual about early reading, or the decoding aspect of it is very non-verbal in the same way that math might be. DS learned to read practically before he could talk, and learned effortlessly. He didn't seem to even care about reading. He was tested at age 6 on the WISC and his PRI was in the 140's (verbal ability a lot lower). Now at age 8 he is still a strong reader but doesn't stand out the way he does in math. He is accelerated 3 years in math.

Anyway, to the OP...I think that most gifted kids who are exposed to phonics and blending sounds will pick up on basic reading at age 5, although I'm sure there are differences in development. I would definitely keep an eye on it if you don't see a lot of progress in the next year, in case there is a reading disability.

I would agree that there is a strong visual component to early reading. I've found that quite a lot of NVLD students were first identified as reading disabled, but then "catch up" and even surpass in reading, but hit a wall in mathematics as they leave elementary (when math changes over from a vocabulary exercise (learning math facts--at least the way we teach it in North America) to an abstract reasoning task). The early years of reading instruction are focused on "learning to read", which is partly a symbolic exercise, much like higher math. Once fluency is attained, instruction switches over to "reading to learn", where reading is about language and communication, and now favors verbal learners.

I would agree that most GT kids with decent exposure to phonemic awareness activities will pick up reading on schedule or early. If there is a reading disability, it is likely to show up as subtler deficits in reading fluency and comprehension (secondary to fluency). Though, of course, classic dyslexia can still occur even in quite gifted children.

Thanks for that contribution aeh - that's really fascinating!

Although the original poster is long gone, I'll throw in my two cents worth for current readers, as I can actually talk to both sides of this debate.

DS was a late reader, who wouldn't voluntarily pick up any kind of book, long after most of his friends were tackling Harry Potter. He refused to read, even though we were almost certain he could if he tried. Reading finally started in grade 1, when his teacher sent home a book to read every night (in a second language - he's in an immersion program). He zipped through his nightly book and their reading levels quite quickly and with little trouble, but still refused to read anything else voluntarily. Not until grade 2 did he actually read his very first-ever book in English (Wimpy Kid), followed by his second (Harry Potter, of course). His book report was on his favourite sections of his Encyclopedia of Science. I wouldn't say he really started to read by choice and for pleasure until grade 3 - when he became just as likely to be reading Stephen Hawking as Rick Riordan.

All this was very weird to me, an early read-a-holic (my own Mom says I came out of the womb with a book in my hand). But since it seemed more like a could-but-won't, we didn't push. By then, we had also gotten used to a clear pattern of total refusal followed by developmental leaps - won't, won't, won't, mastery. And he certainly loved books - from about 18 months, he was insatiable, and had me read to him for 3 - 5 hours a day. At the time, we suspected that he might simply refuse to read until he was capable of handling the kinds of long, complex chapter books he liked to listen to - easily 5 years or more beyond his age.

So when his younger sister also refused to read, I just kept waiting for that magic day when suddenly she too would be happily devouring encyclopedias. And so, I waited way too long. But her daily readers from school were a nightmare, and she fought them harder and harder, and though she seemed to progress there were all sorts of weirdnesses about it (which I have detailed at length in other posts) that we should have been paying a lot more attention to. Eventually, between grade 2 and 3, we discovered DD is dyslexic, and since, have realized DH and his family is just rampant with previously-unrecognized dyslexia.

Now, when DS was young, I knew nothing about giftedness, and nothing about dyslexia or reading. If I knew then what I know now, I would have been freaking about about DS's reading. 99.9th VCI but won't read in grade 2? And lots of weird red flags, too. For instance, he would always make me read all the people's names, even when they were simple. He would always tell me he couldn't read even when I knew he could, and explain, "Mommy, I'm not reading, I've just memorized the words," and I'd just laugh, and say "silly, that's what reading is!" In retrospect, I realize that he was telling me in no uncertain terms that he couldn't decode, he could only do sight words, but at the time it meant nothing to me. So was he just a late bloomer, gaining the developmental capacity to decode rather late? I suspect the more-explicit phonics and reading instruction he received by being in an immersion class was important for him; while he learned fast, I don't think he was "self-taught". Was he just too perfectionist to do less than 100% correct? Don't really know, but that may have been in there too. However, no amount of paranoid scrutiny since his sister's diagnosis has given me the slightest reason to think he too is dyslexic (while other, still-undiagnosed LDs are certainly affecting his ability to get ideas written down, his fluency, spelling and grammar are all excellent).

So, knowing what I know now - on one late reading-kid I would have been needlessly panicked, and he just needed time to grow into it. On the other, I waited too long, and left her in deep misery and anxiety, falling (unrecognized) much too far behind, creating a huge hurdle to get over when we finally started to remediate. These kids aren't always the easiest to figure out. My best advice? Follow your gut. If something feels wrong, it probably is. The biggest red flag, I think, is if something just feels *too hard*. Not that they can't do it, but it seems painful and miserable to do, even if they can. So while both kids avoided reading like the plague, there were some very different behaviours involved. With DS, it seemed like he could read, easily, but didn't want to. With DD, in contrast, it seemed like while she could read, it was horrifically hard, and the easy stuff never got easier. Again, with later-gained knowledge, I now realize that she just wasn't gaining any kind of automaticity. Over the course of grade 2, she took on harder and harder reading tasks, with enough success to satisfy her teachers, but the simple ones were never getting faster or more automatic.

I was, perhaps, on the other end of the knowledge spectrum about dyslexia and reading. It doesn't necessarily help. DS was 6 at the time when we learned he was HG (similar VCI to your DS, Platypus101). One of our first questions was, "If this score is really indicative of his abilities, then why isn't he reading yet? Something must be up!" I did tons of reading and, while looking for an explanation, stumbled upon stealth dyslexia. Many things seemed to match: the tendency of many dyslexics to make far-reaching connections, a love for building, slow handwriting, trouble with math facts but high reasoning ability, learning to read all at once, lots of word omissions and substitutions when reading aloud... I thought I saw many of the indicators and started to get concerned, but the problem is that many of these indicators at age 6 are also indicative of typical development paths. On the advice of this forum (thank you all!) I adopted a wait-and-see approach.

DS (now 7) is gaining fluency in both writing and math (he doesn't loathe it anymore and is getting faster). It's good to hear from others whose kids who have had similar experiences.

Relax. She is still young and learning to read is very developmental. A friend has a gifted daughter (college age now) who didn't read till the beginning of 2nd grade. And at that time she just took off and quickly became one of the top readers in the class. I think it's still a bit young to worry about this too much even for a HG kid unless you are seeing very specific deficits.

My biggest worry would be that she is embarrassed about it. My guess is that if everyone relaxes about the situation it will work out in the end.

Keep in mind that in the US we have been pushing down the age at which we expect kids to read. When I was in school reading wasn't even taught till 1st grade and kids went to K not knowing their letters or numbers. Reading early doesn't necessarily make better readers.

Oh I didn't even notice this was an old resurrected thread!

My fault. Sorry about that! I do that on occasion when I find something in the archives that rings true.

I'll add a caveat to my response the next time I do this.

But look at the interesting conversation that resulted!

Yes. I know that feeling of sitting in angsty wait, wondering if something is off because it feels like an anomaly for your child. Like platypus' son, my DS4 has an intense tendency toward perfectionism that seems to be innate. He has a lifelong pattern of letting skills "slip", then apparently lapsing into dormancy I that area for an extended period of time before revealing an enhanced skill set. reading is no exception, but I'll provide some context.

Speaking. Reading. Bike riding. Swimming. Toileting. These are some of the more memorable casualties of DS' perfectionism. I've learned that DS is a child who needs a good, supported nudge to take off. He needs a tangible safety net and industrial quantities of cheerleading to overcome self doubt and second guessing.

Take speaking. DS started speaking in short sentences for a few days at 5 months, only to go mostly SILENT for the next 9 months, at which point the verbal faucet was welded to "fire hose" mode. I actually worried there was a neurological or hearing problem, but DS identified a tapejara in a book we were reading just as his pediatrician came into his 1-year well child visit, and all worries dissolved. He's a selective performer. On his own schedule and with the right audience thank-you-very-much. Two more months of quiet were followed shortly by voluble speech, 24/7 (yes, he's a big sleep talker).

Swimming was a 2 year induction period of nothingness and sensory apprehension (his existential musings on death and its various causes at that age didn't help) followed by a sudden decision overnight last summer that he'd fling himself into the deep end of the pool on a noodle to chase me. Something similar happened with balance bikes. A major downtown road was closed off for a cycling road race one weekend, and DS decided he wanted to ride with the professionals on X Street because "no other 3 year old would". And so he did. He seems to personally revile intermediate steps. It's like he dreams up an outlandish goal and refuses to be seen doing any less, so he clandestinely practices until he feels he is good enough.

With reading, he did the similar "slip then sleeper mode" trick. He figured out how to decode words himself before 2, spent a weekend as an orgy of playing a spelling game until he was satisfied he could spell the whatever amount of words they covered, then stopped showing any interest in reading. I did almost nothing on the reading instruction front until this fall except for reading to him copious amounts of books on demand. Anytime I asked him to try even one word in a book, he'd flip around like w fish out of water, doing anything to avoid putting his gaze anywhere near the book. So, for more than 2 years, I didn't intervene or push. His trajectory seemed way off family norms (I was reading my dad newspaper articles at 2 and taking books with me to the potty, DH was reading chapter books in pre-k. In an insane way that only makes sense to this community, what I saw in DS seemed alarmingly slow for him.) Outside this forum, my parents, DH, and an IRL friend, I could never say that without being thought a total loon.

I bought an OG reading series last summer with the intent to homeschool reading as a precaution, because DH has a dyslexic sibling and there is no harm in teaching a non-dyslexic child to read phonetically. I wanted to deter his skillful habit of inferring from context and drill down on phonics. I spent September to late November gradually warming DS up to reading with little nonsense word games once or twice a week for half an hour. Last week, I finally started "teaching" him the lessons covertly in play. The method we use is flexible enough to allow me to blitz telescope 10 or 12 lessons into a half hour play session. Anything slower is rejected.

There is a HEAVY executive function component in all this for DS. In the last 4 days, DS has gone from literally flopping over and playing dead when asked to read a short book aloud and requiring 50+ prompts to focus and attend to the book to reading 3 or 4 books voluntarily in a day with under 5 prompts to focus. He is SO pleased with himself at being able to read entire books, and his fluency is picking up speed quickly. He can keep a 10 word sentence he decides in mind and anticipate inflection based on punctuation. In 4 days! After playing dead before and feigning lack of ability convincingly.

I'd like to say the motivation was intrinsic, but it wasn't. I suddenly required him to have to earn all junk TV (Star Wars, Batman) by reading. It's not linear, but translates into roughly one book per 20 minutes of screen time. With movies I'm more generous; half a movie is 2 books. Surprisingly, his reading has prompted him to use his executive function much more recently. He asked to learn to play chess last night, and we spent more than 3 continuous hours of doing puzzles and playing turn taking games together. His impulse control was at personal best levels.

All that is to say that many factors that look similar in effect can cause a child to not read. I hesitate to make sweeping statements on this n=1 limited trial, but in my son, he is highly skilled at making "won't" look like "can't." HTH, or at least you can laugh at my idiocy.