Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums 2 yrs 8 mnths reading sentences should I encourage

For DD, this would have been the kiss of death at 2. If I showed her how to do something, she wanted no more of it. She loved to teach herself. And I'm glad she did, because she had an unusual path to reading, as is often the case for gifted early readers, and I'm sure that if I'd tried to teach her she wouldn't have learned as well. I think that if a child is smart and driven and ready to learn to read at 2, he or she is smart and driven and ready to do it without lessons. And lessons can only get in the way.



I think there is a difference between teaching a skill and teaching (talking about) facts. I think teaching a child to read is perhaps more like teaching a baby to walk. Sure, a baby needs support and encouragement. But will he learn to walk sooner if you pick up his feet and show him exactly where to put them? And if he does, what have you gained? I just see no point in this sort of thing absent a disability (in which case explicit lessons can be crucial). Why teach a child what the child will teach herself?



I'm not so sure of this. I think early readers often progress at very asynchronous rates. While my DD read sentences first at 2 and was fluent before 3 1/2, it was not a smooth process. It took almost a year for her to progress from reading (hundreds of) sight words to sounding words out and I can imagine that it could have taken much longer. Then she progressed very rapidly for a while, but she was absolutely in love with reading at that time. It all depends on her continued interest, after all.