Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Too young to read

Hi there,
I'm wondering what experienced parents in this forum think about or have wisdom about reading under the age of two? It took us until fairly late in the game before we learned about giftedness for our older son who is 7 (then 6), and now it's looking likely that our 19 month old is as well. I've learned to let them take the lead when it comes to learning, following their interests, but when it comes to toddlers, I'm wondering how far to take it.
Our little one was interested in numbers and letters at 13 months and quickly learned to identify the digits up to 10 within a month, and many letters as well. Now it's at a point where he identifies all the letters of the alphabet easily in miniscule and capital letters, quickly assembles them in order on a puzzle, and today he sang the alphabet to me! I've been just going with it, and I decided to see what he could do with this, so within a week he's learned to recognize his own name in writing, 'mommy', 'daddy', his brother's name, 'zoo', 'baby', 'pappa', 'nanna','book', 'Koko', 'Ikea', 'Teija', 'alligator'. I only seem to need to show him two or three times, and then he remembers. He also understands and declares that 'd' is for 'daddy', 'm' is for 'mommy', etc. And he's talking now in general all the time, often repeating what we say - often multisyllible words and sentences.
He's really blows my mind! He's also counting through the teens (with some mistakes) and into the twenties.
I know about hyperlexia, and I don't see any indication that he's on the autism spectrum... he looks in our eyes often, and picks up on social cues extremely easily.
This partly feels like gushing and bragging (I know there's another thread for that), but I want to know whether I should continue showing him numbers and letters and words, or if there are theories out there that say not to. I'm really not pushing him!

Our dd, now 15yo, carried around a DK alphabet/word book nearly as big as her, perhaps starting when she was around 13 months. One of her first words was "readabook." We did help her learn b/c she was so interested, and she was reading pretty well by her second birthday. She has been a voracious and lightning fast reader ever since. She is also very strong in math.

I was concerned about hyperlexia/autism at the time, but she was not diagnosed with either.

Don't worry-- it's not bragging. It's information gathering. Your little one sounds like a real firecracker!

There is no such thing as "too young to read", provided that it is the child who is hungry to learn. My DS was an autodidactic reader before 2, as well. Would I have ever actively tried to teach him to read then? No. But some children don't wait for their parents to clue in!

My DS3.5 had similar interests around that time and loved to make up real and nonsense words with magnetic letters. We'd also borrow boatloads of books from the library, and I'd have him sound out words in the title, which are often printed in colorful, large fonts. Wordplay has always been a big hit, too.

I remember this with my DD, too. Gush away! I second getting familiar with your library (we have a designated day weekly so we don't firget when books are due). Just keep enjoying the discovery together. My son (4yo) is less into reading (well, ok, we read like 15 books so far today and he's reading his way through a phonics book I have for tutoring, but he wasn't into it like DD, as a baby still). Something we've done is take turns reading; DS likes to read the last word of each line (I run my finger along and pause) and read lots of simple rhyming books together like Seuss and Piggie and Gerald, while I'd still read beautiful longer picture books myself, and chapter books later. Now my DD at seven reads Shakespeare with me on a Saturday night for fun

I echo everything that's been said - if you follow the child's lead, you can't go wrong. (My daughter was the same, and nooooo... it's not bragging ) This is the place to talk about it - we all understand.

Go with it! There's no stopping a kid like that from reading. Even though my son knew the alphabet and all the letter sounds before age two, I still assumed he'd learn how to read in school. Then at age two, he started picking words out of the newspaper at breakfast. When I told my husband DS was reading, he refused to believe it (thought it was memorization) until DS started reading obscure signs at gas stations and in grocery stores. It was bewildering, exhilarating and a little bit frightening. But it's all good!

I agree with the advice above. Go to the library at least once a week, check out as many books as you're allowed, and read until your son is bored with it. Play lots of word games involving rhymes, puns, homonyms and what not. Check out Starfall when he's ready to use the computer. You're in for a wild ride!

Awesome. The reason I come here is because my dd does things that the peers I see do not do, even the obviously smart ones. Of course I know that I only see the public face of other folks children, but still, I often do not believe what I see in my daughter. My dd 1st year of life was scary for me because she was so advanced. It certainly might sounds like bragging, but I think it is more driven by uncertainty on how to best proceed. I know what many other parents say they do for their children will not work for my child in many areas of life.

Early on my fear was child proofing, but normal child proofing measures would never work with my child, she at a very young age well under a year could figure out ways to defeat them. She played very clever tricks on us before she was a year old. Even on this forum I often do not share all of my dd 1st year of life exploits because they sound impossible. I often want to, but it just seems so out there that I do not muster the courage to state some of the details.

I will share this, but without exact ages. Well before a year she understood that money could be used to buy things, and had chores and allowances. I first learned that she could count because she was counting the coins as she dropped them into the piggy bank. True I always counted them when I dropped them in, but I will never forget hearing her counting the coins into her piggy bank. The memory of this infant counting coins into a piggy bank is just not an easy thing to share. It is funny because my daughter is now 3 and when she counts to 20 for playing hide and seek other parents will find it precocious, I will never peep a word that she has been able to count to twenty for a couple of years now.

As far as reading, I would say that I would not deprive my child of the learning experience, but I also would not push. Reading for my child is a very complicated subject that I am not sure about right now. I suspect she might be able to read far better than she lets on, but I really do not know for sure. I do know that she could sight read a lot of words at a very young age, but now most of the time she does not claim any reading ability, but then when she is forced to expose an ability to get something that she wants, she does read this or that.

I encourage whatever my daughter is interested in at the time. When she was younger she was into learning to read, now she is into other things. She does like playing on StarFall website, but I limit her time. She is still very much into being read to. Currently she is into ice skating, learning German, being a little philosopher, playing complicated imaginary skits and going to some of her favorite places around town. Some are academic, and some are not.

Yes, I would say encourage reading, and lots of other stuff too.

Thanks for your feedback everyone. The library suggestion is a good one, as I've been lagging behind on that lately. We went today, and he was so excited.

It's just really become clear in this last week that he's way beyond any of his peers. As of today, he just started identifying numbers up to 100 when we were out and about doing errands. And since I showed him these ones, he can identify Toyotas, BMWs, VWs, and Hondas.

The weight of the responsibility that goes with his abilities is starting to dawn on me, and my husband is away, so I'm processing this here with you guys! My other son is gifted, and oh my goodness, it has not been easy! Yes, this will be quite the ride.

The car IDing is so much fun! We have a lot of exotic cars in our area, so DS has fun when he sees a Bentley, Rolls Royce, Maserati, Lotus, Tesla, Ferrari, or Lamborghini. (So do I!) We are car-free, and our mode of transportation is a pair of shoes, occasionally with a stroller, so there's a lot of drooling happening.

I'm so glad you asked this question. My son turned 19 months a couple days ago and is letter obsessed. I noticed about a week ago that he was pointing out words in his most favorite books as well as announcing the titles of his favorite books to me. I thought perhaps he was memorizing the titles or words based on the pictures (which would also be amazing given the volume of titles he seems to know) but it turns out he is starting to recognize some words. I used his alphabet puzzle to spell them and he recognized them out of context as well.

Lots of play in a literacy rich environment seems to be working at our house. I know many people here check out huge amounts of books from the library every week but I tried a different strategy. What we did was hit a big used book sale where all children's books were 25 cents and bought boxes upon boxes of books. We lined the perimeter of every room with books. He has about 75 favorites that we read daily. I guess this helps with sight word recognition because he sees the same books frequently?

I used to try to rotate books but he noticed when books were missing so now I just keep adding to them. That's why library books didn't work as well for us. He gets bent out of shape when we had to return one. I don't even want to know how many books are in my house!!

I've spent some time considering what to do from here. I have no idea! If you find something that works well please come back and post about it.