Awesome. The reason I come here is because my dd does things that the peers I see do not do, even the obviously smart ones. Of course I know that I only see the public face of other folks children, but still, I often do not believe what I see in my daughter. My dd 1st year of life was scary for me because she was so advanced. It certainly might sounds like bragging, but I think it is more driven by uncertainty on how to best proceed. I know what many other parents say they do for their children will not work for my child in many areas of life.
Early on my fear was child proofing, but normal child proofing measures would never work with my child, she at a very young age well under a year could figure out ways to defeat them. She played very clever tricks on us before she was a year old. Even on this forum I often do not share all of my dd 1st year of life exploits because they sound impossible. I often want to, but it just seems so out there that I do not muster the courage to state some of the details.
I will share this, but without exact ages. Well before a year she understood that money could be used to buy things, and had chores and allowances. I first learned that she could count because she was counting the coins as she dropped them into the piggy bank. True I always counted them when I dropped them in, but I will never forget hearing her counting the coins into her piggy bank. The memory of this infant counting coins into a piggy bank is just not an easy thing to share. It is funny because my daughter is now 3 and when she counts to 20 for playing hide and seek other parents will find it precocious, I will never peep a word that she has been able to count to twenty for a couple of years now.
As far as reading, I would say that I would not deprive my child of the learning experience, but I also would not push. Reading for my child is a very complicated subject that I am not sure about right now. I suspect she might be able to read far better than she lets on, but I really do not know for sure. I do know that she could sight read a lot of words at a very young age, but now most of the time she does not claim any reading ability, but then when she is forced to expose an ability to get something that she wants, she does read this or that.
I encourage whatever my daughter is interested in at the time. When she was younger she was into learning to read, now she is into other things. She does like playing on StarFall website, but I limit her time. She is still very much into being read to. Currently she is into ice skating, learning German, being a little philosopher, playing complicated imaginary skits and going to some of her favorite places around town. Some are academic, and some are not.
Yes, I would say encourage reading, and lots of other stuff too.
