Hi Jenafur,
My little guy's reading story goes as follows:
at about 7 months-we noticed him paging thru the yellow pages, and sometimes it really seemed to us that he seemed to be reading. around 1 year old-he became utterly fascinated w/the weather channel and we later realized it was probably because of all the letters, words and numbers on the screen. He could recite and recognize the alphabet by 15 months, and at 18 months was reading the yellow pages to us. We also had to walk him thru our parking lot on a regular basis so he could read the car names to us. When he was 4, i had him at an appointment and while we were waiting, he was reading a book to me. A woman asked me how old he was and when I told her, she asked, "did he just read the words solar system?". I told her, yes. We were so used to his reading by then, that we forgot that he was "different". When he was in pre-school, the school had an arnold lobel (Frog and Toad) group for the second grade. These were my son's favourite books, but he read them when he was 2! Also, during the all saint's mass-the preschoolers were paired with the six graders for special presentations. It was the sixth-graders that read special prayers, along with my son (who was 4 at the time). My husband and I were so proud of him, but later that day, after a teacher congratulated him for doing such a good job reading, a 2nd grader made the comment, "James can read? That's weird!". Fortunately, my son didn't hear the comment and his preschool teacher did a terrific job of explaining to this other child that it wasn't weird, but wonderful. Our biggest problem is finding books that are challenging, but with age appropriate content. That's why we have been doing alot of non-fiction. We are asked constantly, how we got him to read. Other than reading to him everyday, and taking him to the library on a regular basis, I don't think we have done anything special or different. He just loves to read, and we love him!
