thanks Polar Bear. Let me try add more detail:
Aiden started recognising words and then stringing them together before he turned 3. He BEGGED me, with tears and all ensuing drama to help him learn to read. So I made up some games, we played around with words and drawing pictures of words etc. He was a whole word reader from the beginning.
When he started at the gifted pre school (Aged 3) they started with phonics (letterland, which he knew from some magnets and a book he had been given). They only assessed and allowed him to start on reading readers more than halfway through the year. They told me he tested at a specific level but at home he was quite able to read more than that.
The next academic year it got worse and he actually refused to read their readers. But this is also where we started having other issues with teacher and school. AND this is where I started worrying about the reading development. It started as a small niggling feeling at the back of my brain, encouraged by the teachers telling me that in his assessments this was his true level.
The following year (K year) was when everything blew up and we took him out of school in the second quarter.
And then I really saw reason for concern. dry eyes, blinking being the physical symptoms. So off to the opthalmologist for full vision screening - "he is within age acceptable norms".
I would find him staring at a page in a book, desperately staring and then eventually in tears he would tell me that it doesn't make sense - that he can't figure it out. Then refusal to read for a while, then being okay with easier books and me reading the ones he wants to him. We also gave him a yellow film to put over the page and that seemed to make it easier for reading with lots of text on a page. (my mom got the idea off a radio talk show about dyslexia)
Then his younger brother (who also started with self-taught reading before age 3) started taking off in leaps and bounds. And Aiden got panicky when he realised that Nathan was just about on the same ability of reading.
And then I saw how the development of reading should have gone with Aiden - because in Nathan it was textbook for HG+ : sentences to chapter books in a few short weeks, at the age of 3.5 (only once we removed him from the same pre school)
Now Aiden goes to a homeschool group for HG+ kids and the woman there does reading exercises and activities every week. His reading speed has increased drastically since January already (from 42 WPM mid Jan up to 79WPM by Mid March) And he is finally after 18 months of desperate trying able to read that book that had him in tears.
Although there again he read 3 chapters diligently, then now wont even look at the book (and at the moment says he doesnt want to read at all) - hence the love / hate thing. Right now he doesn't want to read, even though last week I took him alone to a book sale to choose books - I let him get a whole box full of new ones (was a bulk warehouse sale).
Any reading specialist I have called (6 to date) keeps telling me that if he can read like that already at age 6 then there is absolutely no problem at all and I am being paranoid and over bearing and pushy.
