At 18 months, my dd barely met the developmental milestone for talking (6 words?). One of those words was "readabook," which she said as she plopped in your lap with a book for you to read to her. Because she was obsessed with books. By her 2nd birthday, she was reading AND talking up a storm. I have no doubt reading aided her acquisition of spoken language, although I don't think it was because talking was hard for her - just an unusual affinity for the written word. By age 4, she didn't want us to read aloud to her any more -- it was painful for her because it was just so darn slow compared to her reading silently to herself.

She (now 13yo and still obsessed with reading, and lightning fast) has always acquired a large amount of vocabulary through reading, and you can tell because she often mispronounces words when she says them, in ways that sort of make sense from the spelling.

I always thought it was weird that she learned to speak and read at the same time - it is comforting to see in this thread that she is not the only one!

Last edited by amylou; 11/01/13 06:03 AM.