Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Spooky.

I have two sons. Both have been exposed to a text rich environment from birth with both parents modeling reading, both parents reading to the children. Both children were very curious about print from a young age.

Older son broke the code in Kindergarten. He did whatever the teacher asked him to do all school year at school but didn't really show that he was sounding out or attempting any reading at home. Still enjoyed bedtime stories. Spring break he woke up one day and showed us all he could read...no sounding out, no emerging halting bumbling...he went from 0 to 100 miles an hour. If I had to guess I would say very fluent late second grade level. He was off to the races. Comprehension was right there too. He always had been one to make connections (abstract, book to book, book to life, book to imagination) and that continued at this reading level and all through his school career so far.

Younger son, at 4, looked around the house and came to the conclusion that he was the only one present who couldn't read. He asked me to teach him. I took out the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 lessons. He did the first 10 lessons in the first session with me, he wouldn't stop. The next day he did another 10. The next day the lessons were getting harder and I stopped after 5 but he wouldn't put the book up and worked through parts of the book by himself (you would have to see the book to understand). He then took the book back to his room and in a few days he was a reader. He would read or attempt to read anything posted. Our night time reading became half me reading to him and half him reading to me because that is what he wanted. Also one of those kids without what I would call a long emergent reader phase. He entered K reading 3rd grade books. His comprehension also completely on the same level of his decoding. His instructional level in 4th grade (with a skip of third grade) is 9th grade level (he isn't getting instruction at this level but that is the tested level). He reads from the library 4th grade to 7th grade books (his elementary school doesn't have many books higher than 7th grade).

The article assumes so much about Sarah. I would love it if Sarah's MOM could give her story. I bet it would be so much more informative.

Heart-warming! I could picture this as I read it.

Yes, some may say the article was about the school's benign neglect of a once-advanced reader.

Indeed. I don't feel my DD10's reading skills have really been challenged at school, sadly. Although she continues to read/test well above grade level, I don't think she is as far above as she once was (though I don't have numbers to prove this--it's just a suspicion). Is she leveling out? Or has she not been appropriately stretched? What I see her doing is answering terrible reading comp test prep questions, day after day.

Exactly, UM.

We've joked over the years that we handed our (public) school a fully literate 6yo with a four hour attention span, and they've given us back an impulsive, indifferent 14yo with a two minute attention span and a desire to be entertained.

{sigh}

It'd be a lot funnier if there weren't significant truth to it. I've mitigated the worst of this "ADD" method of teaching her literacy (and other things)-- by "blocking" things into larger amounts of time devoted to individual learning activities to encourage depth-- but the assessments are what they are, YK?

Not sure why this article has stuck in my mind... but I was thinking about the teeth analogy with the dentist saying: “There is absolutely nothing that we can do to make the process move any faster and, most of the time, the teeth that come in later, when they are good and ready, are so much stronger.”

Interestingly enough DS8's teeth are growing too fast, his adult teeth (teeth normally due in between ages 10 and 12) were being blocked by baby teeth that hadn't fallen out. Last couple of weeks they had to remove 6 baby teeth. An opinionated dental assitant said to not worry, an orthodontist had a more professional pov. If there hadn't been intervention to remove barriers to his naturally accelerated rate his teeth would've come in sideways (a couple were already) with a good chance of needing jaw surgery as a young adult.

I claim the jerk prize, for having wondered whether the underlying motivation for the article was to allow the author, who perhaps always assumed her own children would be early readers, to convince herself that it's actually a good thing her 4yo isn't reading yet. Of course this may be entirely wrong in several different ways.

I really just want an heartfelt apology.

That's all I'm asking for here.

There is nothing I could do to make my older son read before spring break of K...he got it when he got it....and conversely there was nothing I could do to slow down my younger son. When I would tell him this is enough for today he went off on his own. I couldn't get rid of all the text/signs/words he ran into in his daily life and when he demanded I let him read to me at night there was no stopping him. Sure I could have stopped visiting the library and supplying him with new books but the bazillion books we already owned were still there. I could have done dishes or folded laundry instead of listening but he would have read to me while I did chores.

The piece did just make me all the more grateful for DS6's teachers this year, neither of whom has ever suggested that he is some egotistical, approval-obsessed faux-reading automaton.

Again, I can just imagine. "No, no, DS! I have not vetted that book to ensure that you are at 97% comprehension of every page." (yoink)

(children riot and burn the house down)

When my children where younger I used to tell people that by my definition a child was a reader (vs. an emerging reader) when they can't help but help but read everything around them. Words are not something to decode anymore. My older DD wasn't there till 7, while my son hit this by 4. You couldn't stop him from reading, anything and everything around him. Having had kids on two ends of the spectrum gives me an interesting perspective. It's not just at what different ages they hit this milestone, but at how quickly they moved from sounding out simple words to reading without having to think about it. In the case of my two kids is exactly the opposite of the two in the article, the slower reader was the one with comprehension problems.