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DD4 is so fascinating to me. I guessed that she would be reading by 3 or 4, but as of yet she is not. She can read a few site words, and has the ability to sound out letters and put together...but just isn't reading. An interesting thing that she started doing months ago (shortly after she turned 4) is "writing" words. She has pretty good print and can write most letters. She will write all sorts of sentences but they will only be the first letter or so of the words. It will be something like this "CWPPOT?" meaning "can we please play outside today." Yesterday she wrote a note to family for babysitting her and it said "TYSMFBBSUIHWHLOFTGR" meaning "thank you so much for babysitting us, I hope we have lots of fun together" So now it has progressed to writing a little more of the consonants that she hears. She will just sit and sound it all out, and does this very quickly. But then she grabs books and asks us to read it to her. After asking about 3 words to her (like pausing and pointing to a word and asking her to sound it out) she will tell us she just wants us to read it and not ask her. Anyhow, this is so foreign to us because DS7 was reading before 2 on his own. We never sounded out words or did anything. Anyone else have a child doing anything like this? Any thoughts?

I love it!

Between me and my brother, our kids are 4, 5, 6, and (almost) 7.

My DS7 (HG) knew all upper/lowercase letters/sounds before age 2, then didn't read till after age 5. He writes now, but not well, and that took some doing.

Neice 6 (who does a lot of very smart stuff) still doesn't know the sounds of all 26 letters. However, she has better handwriting than me, and can spell/write a few hundred words -- for almost 2 years now, she asks her mom for a list of words to type, and she types/writes for long periods of time (no she's not autistic). So she can write me a birthday card, but can't read a kindergarten-level book.

DD5 finally learned all letters/sounds last year; was sounding out words at 3 1/2 before she knew the sounds the rest of the letters made. Around 4 - 4 1/2 she was writing stuff similar to the original post; most "words" had at least 2-3 letters. Also, the "words" were separate, and scattered around the paper at random.

Neice 4, learned most of the letter sounds last week all of a sudden.

Kids are all so different, and each one fascinating. Isn't it fun to see what comes next?!

Hysterical!

My grandfather used to read to me pretty every day, from when I was a toddler throughout the preschool years.

My mother tried to start me on the basics of reading during the summer before 1st grade (back when the only thing you learned in K was how to write your name). I don't know if she was worried for me (I was skipping K). I point blank refused to go past lesson 2 in the book. I also refused to learn to count past 10 when my grandmother tried to teach me the weekend before school started. I clearly remember feeling very resentful about it all, thinking "that's what I am going to big kids' school to learn, why are you bugging me???".

In December I was reading the newspaper to my grandfather. A few months later our reading sessions were gone. I had moved past the need, but... I can understand a child deciding to pretend not to be able to read (or refusing to learn) in order to keep the reading-together time.

Shellymos, if you want to push it, maybe stress the fact that her reading time with you will remain as is, and set up a separate time for her to learn how to read/buddy read with you/read independently?

DS did exactly this for years (from age 4 to age 6 I suppose - it was only reading your post that led me to notice that he doesn't do it any more). He called it "writing in letter code". He'd often do it aloud rather than by actually writing the letters down, too. And expect me to guess what it meant, which was OK when it was ILY but hard otherwise! So I don't know whether it has anything to do with the reading - DS was reading fluently before he even started doing this (he was obsessed with spelling individual words earlier, too). In his case I see it simply as wanting to join in with the writing scene but not being willing to write enough letters to make a whole sentence.

Such a coincidence that you wrote about this today! I just wrote a post on my blog about this with son.

He actually read his first book independently just a few days ago (at three and a half) but even though that�s early, he�s been perfectly capable of doing it for months, and just never wanted to on his own. He�d read full sentences with no problem at the pocket chart I bought for him, and he was also writing short words already. but whenever I�d ask him to take a shot at reading (things I knew he could) off of the page of a book, he�d always just want me to do it. It was just so odd to me because he is SO into his books (he�ll make me read like ten of them in one sitting, or a whole chapter of Harry Potter); you�d think finding out he was capable of reading from a book on his own would super-excite him, but it really didn�t.

You know what did the trick? His six year old friend coming over to play and reading an easy-reader to him� Every few pages, she�d get stuck on a word and he�d tell her what it is. That night, he read the whole thing with me, word for word� and the day after that, he read it on his own, and started reading a couple of others on his own, too! (I always tried the pausing trick, too, and pretending I needed help figuring out a word. Sometimes it worked, but never like it did when his first grade friend really actually did need help.)
(If you�re interested, my blogpost about it is on aliciastucky.blogspot.com)

I agree with SiaSL. Even after he learned that he could read books on his own, he was adamant about making sure I would still read to him a lot, too. I wonder now if that fear was holding him back, or something. I make sure now to set aside different times for both activities: reading to him, and then reading together.

A few other thoughts . . .

Kids don't always like to read to an adult, but will be happy to read to a dog or a baby, who like the attention and don't know when the reader gets a word wrong.

Also, you might try some letter refrigerator magnets, and put out the magnets you need to spell a few easy related words (cat/sat/bat/mat/fat), and have her try to make or change words with those.

Or you could sit back and revel in the adorableness of it all (or get her a cell phone and let her send these as text messages, since she already knows the lingo). She doesn't have to read at 4, and her brain might just be concentrating on something else right now.

Sounds like a fun time in the original post.

There's certainly no "problem" here per se, but it does sound like one of those situations where you know the kid is ready, but maybe the kid isn't convinced of this, and just needs a little motivation to try to prove it to herself, have that aha! moment, and move on to bigger and better things.

DD6 did the same thing with regards to reading aloud, and I've posted about it elsewhere. What worked in her case was an appeal to her pride. I told her about how far ahead of me in all things she was from me at that age... except... I had been reading to my mom by that age. Less than a week later, she sat down with her mom and read her a book.

Once she hit that milestone, she felt comfortable entertaining herself with books on her own, but she still gets to snuggle up to mom and read stories, sometimes taking turns with different books. And of course, bedtime is still story time with dad.

thanks for all the comments, great stories to hear! And I will check out your blog astucky, thanks for sharing! Yes, I am not at all concerned something is wrong because she hasn't started reading. Just strange for us as it's new to us. She does know we will read to her either way as we still read with her brother every night and she sees that. He does read by himself a ton too...and he reads to her. It's funny with her letter writing though because DS6 is very factual and logical and will quickly correct her and tell her that those are not real words, just the starting sounds. Sometimes that makes her even more sure of herself and want to do it more to bother him I think, and then other times she tries to change it. She will ask how to spell words sometimes and spell them all out...and if I asked her how to spell some easy words she generally can (cat/sat/hat). She does like to play with letters like that but I should break out the magnets again...I put them away on a day when I was overwhelmed with all the kids stuff everywhere. When we read books and I pause she says the next word (if she knows the book) but that is just memorization (of course I laugh saying this because that is what we thought with her brother who was reading by 20 months old...we were convinced it was all memorization until someone informed us he could read and we tested the theory). How funny how different they are! Better run...time to paint some pumpkins with the kiddos.

My DD 3.5 has been doing the code writing for awhile and has just started reading, so yeah I 'm thinking too that they go hand in hand. I bet your DD will be reading soon!

I have to ask if your DS is Hyperlexic by chance. My DS has been dx'd with it and started reading his first words around 15 months. If your son does have it, I'd love to hear how he progressed with it and when he started really understanding what he was able to read. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, just ignore my crazy ramblings!

Yes I do know what you are talking about utkallie, I have heard of hyperlexia, but DS was not hyperlexic...he was actually reading and understanding it all. Very strange. We really thought he had things memorized at first and had no clue he was actually reading.