Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Your child started reading when!

My DS2.9 loves to spell out the letters on EVERY single sign, book, poster, and tshirt and then ask me what it says. Needless to say I am exausted and I get a lot looks and comments when we go out. I often have people ask me how did I get him to do that. The answer is I did'nt, but I have recognized that this as a sign that he ready to shift into reading, so I am begining to teaching him sight words and how to sound out the phonics when we read.

I wanted to open up a forum where we could talk about our reading experiences. What did you do, if anything, to help your child shift into reading? When did you know your little youngster was ready to read or reading already? What was the strangest or funniest comment you ever received about your childs reading abilities.

I also must tell you a funny story about my now GD6. First I must tell you that I had never taught her anything in the way of ABC's or 123's, I always figured that was what school was for. haha I also never thought that she was more advanced than her peers. My child was smart but normal..
So, here I am going in for our beginning of the year K assesment conference, with my normal DD5. I will never forget the shock when that teacher told me that my child's reading level was almost that of a second grader and that she had already mastered K math! WHAT? I never taught her math and there is no way she can read. This teacher's crazy, I thought, we read to our child every night, I would know if my child could read. Well, aparently I was wrong, my daughter had indeed mysteriously learned to read sometime before K and had managed to keep it a secret.

Needless to say I have become a little more in tune with my children's abilities since then, and have been amazed ever since!

I never made a concerted effort to teach academic skills to my kids either. In fact, I subscribed to the notion that academic instruction before K could stifle the development of discovery learning. So, I didn�t teach, but did decorate their play room (dining room without furniture) with colorful and inexpensive posters from a school supply store, including the ABC�s and a number chart 1-100. They watched an hour or less per day of television, including Magic School Bus, some Discovery animal series, Wishbone and a few Muppet/ Sesame Street videos (a favorite was called Things that Go). We read to them every day.

They each sight read signs and grocery store items by around 18-24 months. They sight read Bob books and all level 1-2 early readers with ease before K. Even when they were reading beginner chapter books, I didn�t consider it �reading� because they usually could not sound out a word- they either knew it or didn�t, although they usually did know it. Not always though. In some cases, they would insert a different word starting with the same letter having a similar meaning.

My son had very formal phonics training from 1st-3rd grade, but it never �took� other than to do well on the assignments or tests. He never applied it to reading. My daughter started the same school and phonics program beginning in mid third grade and passed her assignments due to tutoring from he 1st grade brother as the coding was completely foreign to dh and me. After third, they each brained dumped the phonics coding.

Any oral reading assessment would surely yield average scores in comparison to reading comprehension tests. Nonsense word decoding and spelling also paint very average results. Yet they read very well, even orally now (since around 4th grade) as they have very strong vocabularies.

As to when I realized they were actually reading, it is similar to your story. My daughter�s (first) K teacher was gushing about how well our almost 5 year old could read and then looked at me as if I were a terrible mommy when I seemed unimpressed. This was the catalyst for me to rethink my definition of reading.

On the flip side, when I volunteered in my daughter�s 1st grade class to work with the kids who could already read, I noticed at least two children who had near flawless and seemingly natural phonic decoding ability, but with much lower conceptual awareness than I expected.

I guess reading acquisition is one of the strongest indicators of learning style.

I love to talk about this one about DD6, My mom had given me those sponge letters, for her to play with in the tub. So at about 9 - 10 months she started asking "what this" and I told her, then we started playing find the letter. By the time she was a year she knew all her letters (and 1-10) At 14 months she spelled her name and asked me if that was her name. I had wooden letters in her room with her name spelled out so that's her learned it. At 18 months she was sitting at the kitchen table and all of a sudden said "Mommy, mommy begins with the letter "M" mmmmmmmmmmmmm" she understood phonics. After that she started reading street signs, street names and also became my back seat driver. "Mommy, how fast are you going, the speed limit is 45. What street are you looking for? We just pasted _____ street. At about 2 1/2 I figured out she had a reading vocabulary of over 500 words, so I put a book in front of her and she read 65 pages the first day. I don't know why I didn't do that earlier. As for when she started really reading I would have to say it was between 18 - 24 months.

The first time a stranger commented about her skills happened at a book store. The books at home were either too hard or too easy. So I had a lady at the store help. Another Mom overheard DD reading and when I was at the checkout she was telling me that it's a shame there aren't any good gifted schools in our area. It was the first time I had heard the term, and honestly I really didn't know the full meaning of what she was saying. The good news is that I do know now.

My dd at 18 mo knew letter names and sounds. She SO wanted to read that I did some googling and found www.headsprout.com. She did the first 3 lessons and that was pretty much it, she took off!! She did a few more lessons and was going faster than the program would allow and lost interest. By 2, she was on her way!! She is a great reader today, prefering nonficion medical books!

I discovered DD3 had ten or so sight words a few months after she turned two. I think she'd known the alphabet forever (i.e., before she could really talk). I didn't teach her deliberately, but she learned it. Of course when I discovered she had taught herself sight words I figured it was only a matter of time before she started reading, but it took longer than I thought it would. She didn't begin reading phonetically until very recently, but she's taken off in a big way. I think it's really interesting that she refuses to "sound out" words, and thus cannot read BOB books, but she is able to read words she's never heard or seen before. She is sounding them out, obviously, but for her it only works inside her head.

I have done _nothing_ to teach her, except read to her and occasionally let her play on my computer (mostly starfall).

I guess in retrospect, I should have figured something was up when she was less than two years old and refused to let me read her bedtime stories (e.g., Peter Rabbit)--because she had to recite them to me instead.

She doesn't read in public much (since she is very shy) but she has gotten some crazy looks from time to time. Nobody has said anything negative to us.

My DS6 started on numbers around 18 months, I think, and then letters, and was reading road signs and grocery store labels by the time he was 2. At 2 1/2, we moved across the country, and all there was to do in a U-Haul all day was read signs and his books and PowerTouch books, and he did that all the way. When we turned in the U-Haul, the lady was shocked that he read the brochure to her! It was a few weeks after that when I realized that he had a photographic memory and said "oh, that's how he does that!" He had asked about everything on the grocery list when I was writing it, and I told him the words, and about two weeks later he asked for crackers (his favorite meal, chickennuggetsketchuptomatoranchdressingandcrackersplease, all one word) and I went to get them out of the cabinet. He was watching, and he looked up and said "Ritz" and I said "yes, Ritz crackers" and he kept going, "light bulbs, toilet paper, toothpaste..." and I realized that he was reciting the grocery list from two weeks earlier! I went to tell my mom, and he tagged along, and when I left off at toothpaste, he filled in the next few items for her. We went to tell my brother, and when we got to the end of that, he filled in the next few items as well! That's when the light bulb went on in my head and I realized that every time I told him a word, it was stored in that photographic memory. He doesn't really show it that way anymore, and I'm afraid he may have lost the photographic quality, but he still remembers everything like a steel trap--as long as he reads it.
Anyway, by age 3, he could read literally anything--sounded out words he didn't know and everything. I never taught him any of it, just told him numbers and letters and words when he asked, and he figured out phonics on his own. His "word attack" score on the WJIII test last year was >21.9 years, which is as far as it goes, I believe. Comprehension runs well behind that, of course, because he has no life experience--but I told them, he could have gotten that same score two years earlier without ANY comprehension. He's always learned things before he knew what they meant--he knew how to count as high as you could listen to when he was 2, but he didn't know what numbers really were. Comprehension comes. And I'm probably off the subject again, *sigh* what was the question? LOL!

DD begged me to teach her to read when she was 3.5. So I did (using phonics.) She caught on very quickly and has been a voracious reader ever since.

DS seems to have learned to read from a LeapFrog video called "Letter Factory" when he was about 2.5. I used to let him watch it every morning when I was in the shower. One day we were playing with some magnetic letters at his preschool and I discovered he could read simple words.

One of the first things DD learned was letters. She had found a set of ABC block books and was obsessed with them. She would bring book after book to us to read and by 9 mths she knew all her letters and soon after the sounds they make. They say the average child in a middle class family is read to about 1000 hrs by the time they get into kindergarten and the lower income family by comparison read to the child about 25 hrs during the same time frame. My best friend brought that to my attention the last time we went to visit b/c she laughed and stated that DD has maxed out that 1000 hr mark already and she wasn't even 2 at that point. She was obsessed with books and the written word. She also has the ability to recite phrases back to you with no problems, my favorite story is three little pigs. She complained about wanting out of her carseat which got the response of not by the hair on my chinny chin chin. This brought a huge smile to her face with "Then I will hoof and I will poof and I will blow your house in said the wolf."

So with the memorization of phrases and quick pick up of ABCs I was not too shocked that sight words were next. We however have the child that doesn't really want to read and is more a sneaky reader and many a story on that one but through the examples that are numerous I know she is able to read but I really don't push it. When she is ready to sit down and read the book through then fine. But until that day comes I will let her be.

As for people's responses... I was on a trip visiting my best friend when she 'read' her first word to us so mouths dropped open and my friend was super excited that she witnessed it. Talking to another friend, competition raised it's ugly head since she has a daughter of the same age and I got a 'Oh she is memorizing which is the easiest form of reading' comment. Sure it is the beginning but she was also not even 2.

I now see signs that she is fully ready for phonics since her game here lately has been picking something in the room and sounding it out to then inform me what letter it starts with. So if she shows interest I might try phonics with her.

Nautigal,

I looked up photographic memory b/c we suspect DD has it. There really is no solid proof at this point but what I did find aligns with your comments... they believe photographic memory is something a select few are born with but grow out of it which might be why it is hard to study.

Ds was starting to read around 2 and half he is 3 and a half now. He may have been able to read before that but, he was also very speech delayed and didn't even start talking in sentences until just a couple months ago. I do know he knew his shapes at 11 mos. and his numbers (not rote) well before he turned two.

It does kind of suck not being able to spell anything out to other adults ha ha.