Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion When did your child start to read independently?

Interesting thread!

My daughter (now almost 6) taught herself to read at 26 months (or at least that's when we detected her reading abilities). We had her reading skills formally assessed at age 3.5, and at that stage, she had decoding abilities of a 9 year old and comprehension of a 7 year old.

Her precocious reading was one of the main things that prompted us to have her assessed for ASD at 28 months. Turns out, she was/is not hyperlexic, but she is in fact on the spectrum. All of this has added up to an interesting -- and at times, amusing -- journey. One of my daughter's fixations when she was turning four was a biography on Joseph Stalin. She asked to have a Joseph Stalin-themed birthday party that year...thankfully, we were able to convince her to go with the more age-appropriate dinosaur theme!

It's hard to remember clearly, here are the things that stick out to me:

DD11:
Loved being read to at a very young age and clearly had several books memorized, which I realized because she would giggle or make motions in anticipation of the next page. Somewhere slightly before or after her first year she could retrieve books by title.

I remember her spelling before she was reading, sometime around two years old, and she was writing with some reasonable phonetic approximation at age three (like a typical late K/early 1st).

The next clear memory I have is her first completely independent chapter book sometime during age 4--I mostly remember because it was a Junie B. Jones and when I poked my head in and asked how the book was, she said (with great big eyes) "Not Good....". I asked if the book was too hard and she said, "No...Junie is being naughty .

Despite her independence (she devoured books), we also continued to read together every night through 5th grade, which is actually how I realized how precocious she was. It wasn't so much what she could read on her own (which was pretty much everything), it was the comments she made about what we were reading together that really struck me as unusual.

DS9:
He was completely different. Very visual, kinesthetic kid. His biggest pre-K interests were non-fiction videos which he would watch and then act out with toys afterwards. He mostly wanted non-fiction read aloud too, which I hated. He was reading some before he started kindergarten (probably first grade level?) but was not an enthusiastic independent reader.

He was in early first when he hit the assessment point my daughter hit in kindergarten (which maxed out the assessment being used at the time). He is not a kid who often goes and seeks out a book to read, but loves read alouds and if he starts reading, will become immersed for a really long time. So he's a kid who read HP in 2nd grade, but once he would finish a book or a series, he wouldn't necessarily pick another one up. DD leaves the library with 15 books, DS leaves with 2-3. Yet he surprised me by testing much higher than I would have expected on the SRI, so go figure....


My DS always loved the pictures too, but in the long run that hasn't interfered with his reading ability (decoding or comprehension). Especially in picture books, there is a lot of information contained in the pictures that enhances the story and is not part of the text. I think it is what builds the ability for kids to turn words into visuals. I've noticed that as he's gotten older, he will sometimes slip into very detailed descriptions of how he imagines a character or setting in a book he is reading.

Graphic novels have really exploded if you are looking for something else. There is actually as much non-fiction as fiction. It's not a format I particularly enjoy, but it has high appeal to kids who love visuals. In some cases there are graphic versions of great novels--I wouldn't ever feed a child the graphic version first, but it could be a fun independent follow up to a read aloud of the original.

Kristen, what a great post. I'm adding it to my burgeoning collection of funny Stalin stories.

I don't remember exactly when DS6 began reading anything independently. I have an idea it was 3. I don't think he did it to any great extent until 4.

DD10 was a "late" reader. When we decided to go with the public school system, we thought she would be more likely to learn and not be bored in kindergarten if she didn't know how to read. Since she didn't have a strong interest in reading on her own (science and math were more fun), it was relatively easy for us to not do anything that would encourage her to learn to read.

DD started kindergarten at 5 1/2 knowing her name, letter sounds and a few sight words. By age six, she was reading things like recipes on her own. By the end of kindergarten, she was reading 100-200 page chapter books independently and didn't want us to read to her (we were too slow).

My ds is also really into the visuals and really prefers to read books with colored pictures still. So far he likes the Martha Speaks chapter books and Geronimo Stilton books. Does anyone know of anymore chapter books with colored pictures? Thanks!

All three of mine were different (no surprise). DD14 was around 2.5; her favorite "toys" were books. I kept board books everywhere. I remember handing them to her in the back seat of the car when she was a year old (over & over...). I enjoyed reading to her & she enjoyed reading to herself. I didn't really ask her to read to me. It was just what we did. There was a lot of repetition and she just picked up on the words, phrases, etc. Not to discount her teachers in school. I know they refined some of her phonics. Anyway, she still reads like a fiend, which is extremely gratifying. We try to go to the used book store so that she can get credit for her previously read books and get more as often as possible. (All three kids do, actually.) She ends up reading most of her books several times over. I did the same thing at her age. Kind of cool.

DD12 (who was just dx'd with dyslexia) was not as much of a reader. She probably started reading independently around 5ish. Her sister read to her a lot & we would all read together. But she did not pick up on it like DD14. I did not feel the need to push the issue, though. We worked on fluency a lot when she was in 2nd grade. She still is not crazy about reading though. I'm sure it has to do with the dyslexia.

DS9 was around 3.5-4. It sounds strange, but I don't remember his process. Probably because he had so many people to read to him. We lived near extended family when he was young. But it definitely came easily to him. He has always preferred non-fiction books to fiction. (He never liked Dr. Seuss.) He wanted to know about how things work, where they came from, etc. So those were the kinds of books I read to him & from which he learned to read. Not the easiest to find for a little guy. Now he drives his sisters crazy because he has learned so much & of course he wants to tell them. And most of the time he is right. Keeps his 14 year old sister on her toes!

DD8.5 was 5 before she could read. We found out that she had amblyopia at 4yrs and was functionally blind in one eye and had pretty bad vision in the other. Even after this was identified, she was patched and forced to use the weak eye for 1.5 yrs. I think this hid a lot of her abilities. Hard to read when you can't see!

She did not like to read at all and fought it at all levels. It was grade 2 before she would read independantly and for pleasure (although I am sure she was capable of it long before then). I enrolled her in reading sessiosn at the public library that matched reluctant readers with therapy dogs. She met and read to 'Cosmo' each week. It really brought her out of her shell! She was excited to pick out new books each week. By the end of two months she moved from easy readers to grade 4 level books. I think she lacked the confidence to do it (secondary to her extreme perfectionism). The dog was nonjudgemental and did not care if she made mistakes. I found it ironic that it took a strange dog to unlock her love of reading when we have three of our own at home who would have been happy to oblige her.

DS 2yr10mo can pick out a few words, but I don't think he is anywhere close to reading. From what we can tell, his vision is fine. I am interested to see how differently he presents from his sister as a preschooler.

DS was 2y5m when I realised he could read unseen text, prior to that I was aware he could read a few words but that was about it. He was about 2y9m when he moved onto easy / first chapter books.

very interesting thread. I read it with interest because this exact thing has been on my mind so much lately.

DS(4) was able to repeat books from memory before he was 2. Before 2.5 he was picking out words that he knew in books I was reading and wherever he saw them. He begged me to teach him to read so we read Noddy magazines and he would read the words he knew. He started pre school at age 3 and suddenly everything slowed down.

"I'm not old enough to read" he said and that was that. He was not given easy readers until nearly 10 months into the year.

The school uses the DRA system - which is a very complete and comprehensive system: kids are tested on fluency and comprehension and application of read text; DS gets caught up looking at the pictures and so gets caught with that. This year he gets a reader every week; but I am convinced that he is still hiding ability.

It's hard to pinpoint, but i am sure that he can read a lot more than he lets on. These last three weeks of no school have been amazing - suddenly he is "able" to read sight words, tricky new words he has never seen before and found an early reader "Horrid Henry" book. Lovely chapter book with three - 5 lines of text and then colour pictures and so on.

I have seen him sitting on his own before - and seen his eyes moving across each row of text as though he is reading. I have always wondered if his need for perfection coupled with someone telling him that he is too young to read has delayed the jump for him. IOW the growth in reading is slower than what I am reading here for kids starting at a similar age to him.

am I making sense?

DS(2.5) has recently started reading words and very easy emerging reader books. I don't know if this is a catalyst for DS4, and I also worry about him starting school in Jan and seeing the same backpedalling trends...

any thoughts on this?

DS10 was a confirmed ready by 3 (the director of his gifted preschool said he was obviously a self-taught reader by the way he read or wrote or something like that) i think he was reading his board books to himself before age 2 when i thought he was just looking at the pictures. He spent a lot of time looking at his books from a very early age and had a very long attention span and desire for books from day 1. I know he could read words at 18 months but we thought it was a funny party trick at that point (Hey guys, check THIS out!) because he couldn't talk. You could show him a list of words and say "Show me Moon" and he'd point to Moon. The order of the words didn't matter and I could change up the words. Maybe it was a photographic memory thing? Anyway...

He was definitely reading independently at age 4 but I don't remember what exactly! I remember he read the 1st Harry Potter at 5 and read on the bus from school everyday and at bedtime every night in gr K. but he preferred non-fiction until last year. (age 9)

I just came back to this post to add that my DD8 started independently last year at age 7. Before that she loved pop up books and books that were more visual than straight chapter books. She seemed a little less confident to read them. Right now she is reading Desperaeux and enjoying it but she is less enthusiastic and voracious of a reader than her brother. She couldn't read in gr K and she managed to do very well in a 1st gr program that year. She was independently reading BOB books and other simple books (the early reader Level books, Dr Suess books, etc) to build her skills. Now she finished a 3rd grade program and has very good comprehension and reads above grade level so she is doing well.

It's amazing how different kids, even siblings, can be when it comes to learning styles and needs!