When dd was younger (between 21 months and 3 years) She used to memorize entire books after just a couple of readings and would recite them without looking at the books. She had also memorized all the lines from the jungle book movie and could enact any scene verbatim with proper intonation and expression. Now at 4.5 yo, she seems to have lost that talent, though not completely. She did recently learn the let it go song in both English and the 25 languages one after listening to both songs maybe 5 times each. So it is there but it is no longer jaw dropping.
Yes, this is like both of my kids (although DD is the only one who would have made anyone worry about ASD).
Thinking about it a bit, I realized that recognizing shapes out of context is an skill that would help kids learn to read. So I'm guessing that for those of us who have really early readers we saw our kids do similar things at not quite 2. One part of learning to read is learning recognize a particular shape (the letters) even when you see it out of context.
I see your point. It's the kind of skill that would help kids crack the code without instruction, perhaps (and both of my kids did that).
What I mean by that is that my 3yo should probably not actually have been remarking on how such-and-such illustration in a children's book reminded her so much of WTC North Tower, nor that prominent citizen arrestee on the front page of the paper looked an awful lot like The Wizard of Oz. Or "Mama, what does {adult full sentence overheard at the library two weeks ago} mean?" eek Honestly, if I weren't HG+ and also highly attuned to my surroundings and the visual/verbal landscape around me, I would not have known where she picked the stuff up, and then she REALLY would have looked amazing, coming up with full sentences like that and us thinking that they were de novo.
yeah, yeah. This is also like DD. She would spout back whole phrases and reuse them in perfect context. You had to be her mom to know that she was "chunking" that. She also talked nonstop, all the time. (Do you know that scene in Austin Powers--"How do I tell them I have no inner monologue?") She freaked people out in her ones and twos, though she was tall, so I think she passed as older.
DS wasn't like this at all, though--his language learning curve was slower and much more typical in its development. However, he read a full year earlier. (shrug)
