Originally Posted by aquinas
Fair question! smile

I read spontaneously when I was 2 and my parents had stuck with phonetic letters when I asked for "decoding". I figured the approach had facilitated early reading because it avoided confusion over distinguishing between two sets of labels. My thinking was that using the same approach would allow my son to just jump from phonetics to sounding out the words on his own when he was ready.

Apparently that was all moot, since the method doesn't seem to be the causative factor.

We have some magnetic letters, too, but he's never shown an interest in them, other than as debris when he plays with his construction vehicles. Maybe they were purchased after he knew the alphabet already...? (Or, maybe, in my refusal to use the letter names, he thought I was illiterate! Ha!)

DD learned letter names first because we were just caught off guard. Then she learned the alphabet song. Then she became obsessed with phonics. When she went to preschool she had trouble because the teachers thought it was funny that she called the letter names by their sound. This year (preK) they have been doing a letter of the week and that seems to have helped, but she still will occasionally identify a letter by its sound. Thankfully, she already knows how to read.

That is all to say you might have very little control and either way it can be a little hairy.