My guess is that this article was aimed at parents of all Sarahs out there and they are many. It's not uncommon for parents these days to want their children to be fluent readers before Kindergarten. I won't share all the details since well, they are not mine to share publicly here but sometimes, I have to ask twice to make sure I heard them right. On one instance, I was ready to call either building security or police for child abuse. This happened before I had DD and it made me swear that I'd never force a child who isn't ready to learn to read to read. Some parents really need to take a chill pill and realize that pushing reading early just isn't worth it in long run and it's not necessarily harmless. These hothoused advanced readers/skimmers often learn to guess their way through multiple-choice tests and their gaps go undetected for years.
I've mentioned this before but there is no way my DD would read a book that she doesn't fully comprehend. She'd squirm and stop reading after a few pages. But I can imagine that there are compliant little girls out there who would sit through a book that is too difficult out of their willingness to please their parents and teachers.
Early literacy brings a lot of insecurities from parents who care about education. The author was probably trying to reassure parents of emergent readers that it is okay to let the process unfold organically.
The problem for parents of children who are actual early readers is that we get mistaken for hothousing parents and even worse, our children are treated the same way as "Sarah." I don't have a solution to fix this and I'm not looking forward to kindergarten.
