Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion 3yo can spell but can't read

DD3.3 has been spelling words for a while now and can spell difficult and long words like oatmeal and Elizabeth( her best friend's name). She has no problem spelling any word phonetically. However, she can't read- not even the words she can spell. How is this possible? She recognizes and writes both upper and lowercase letters so I know that is not the barrier. It seems as if she can translate sounds into letters but not the other way round. Any ideas and suggestions on how to get her to read?

Schedule an opthamology appointment?

Zenscanner, her 3 yr appt is end of this month and I will get a referral to an eye doctor. But I doubt if it is vision problem. She will read the letters of a word and even tell me what sound each letter makes but when I ask her to put it all together, she will just look at me and say," can you tell me what the word is".

Wait.

Mine kinda does that too, though he can't spell oatmeal! He will occasionally read a word when he really wantsta. I've been assuming this is a cost/benefit analysis issue... reading is just more work than fun so far.

I'm not worrying about it, ymmv

Can you trick her into it? (I mean reading.) my ds was lazy about reading at that age, but spelling. I would try here and there, but kept just reading to him. Then, one day, I was reading National Geographic for little kids, it was a question; then while waiting for ds to answer with his ideas, he read the answer.

Since then (he is my first) in looking at emerging reading info from school (which didn't apply to him) included seeing if child can recognize words in book you're reading. My ds wouldn't have done this, but I think he was afraid (unwarranted) that if he read, I would stop reading to him. I think sometimes kids also don't want to perform.
Keep us posted!

I use the strategy when reading aloud of intentionally getting words wrong. Start with a familiar book that she has practically memorized anyway, and let her "correct" you a bunch of times. Then do it again with a less familiar book, and a less familiar book, until you are doing it with a book you've never read before. Once she is used to the "correct poor confused Mama" game, she may forget that she had claimed not to know those words you're getting wrong.

My DD had performance anxiety about reading, and it took her all the way to age 5. She would read the odd word or two from signs when we were out and about, but that was it. I finally sat down with her and discussed all the ways that she was so far ahead of me at her age... except one, because I was reading to my mom when I was 4. She read a book to her mom by the end of that week. Shortly thereafter, she was reading aloud to her pre-K class.

I mention an opthamologist because my son has visual tracking problems related to lazy eye (amblyopia.) It's taken awhile for him to be able to read a line in a book without a guide, but it still takes longer. To extend that same notion down, if there is a visual processing (rather than just a classic lens/focus) issue it could play out in not being able to process a whole word at once. I'd imagine there would be other indicators, though, such as not being able to catch a ball, perhaps issues with mazes, searching like when assembling puzzles, etc.

I'd suggest not pressing her; she will when she's ready.

I think sometimes it can be scary to learn to do new things, especially if you have some awareness that they are things older children do. Sometimes our children need to be their chronological age or even younger, even though they "can" do things older children do. It seems best to me, and it seems to work with my DS, to let them drive, as it were.

FWIW, my DS had a phase at 2 of being absolutely obsessed with spelling, maybe for 6 months or so. He'd spell for fun all the time and would constantly ask me how to spell words. I don't remember exactly how it went, but I have a couple of landmarks that mean that there can have been at most 3 weeks or so between the end of that phase and the first time he picked up an unfamiliar book and read it end to end. (Before that he could read, actually, but he didn't quite own that skill, somehow.) So I don't know quite what was going on, but maybe it was something like that the spelling phase gave him confidence that he really had cracked the code?