Anyone else experience this? Hanni (2y10m) pretends to read -- she gets me to name words in books, and she "reads" familiar books from memory. And I catch myself thinking, "Wow, I hope she really is learning to read!" And then I think, "Where did THAT come from?" I have no investment in her being an early reader. Or so I thought.

Here's what I think. If she started reading before 3, the staff at the preschool would finally get it. I love her preschool, but it's clear they don't get her. I told the teacher how Hanni said, "We sleep all in a row. We sleep one night, and then we sleep the next night, and then . . . " The teacher gave me a nice smile, like, what a cute story. Then I added a throw-away comment about how this was her mentally using linear space to represent time. And the teacher stopped, and her whole expression changed. And she said, "Wow. That's . . . really amazing. REALLY amazing." Which made it clear that a) she doesn't notice this stuff about Hanni herself, and b) even when she sees it (or hears the story) she doesn't get it for herself what it means. So I think, "Dang. If Hanni started reading, they'd HAVE to get it."

Anyone else been-there-done-that? Don't get me wrong, I would never pressure her, but even just having the thought ("C'mon kid, you can do it!") kind of shocked me.

If she wants to learn to read and she enjoys the lessons, I don't see you doing anything negative (seems positive to me). Teaching a willing learner is great.

Like it or not, kids who learn faster than >99% of other kids are just really different. They aren't the kinds of kids that teachers see every day or even every few years unless each teacher's class has a hundred kids (?). A teacher may base her view of development on the vast majority without knowing much about the <1%. This is how I try to envision a teacher's perspective.

A child who is ~3 who can read, say, a Bob Book, or do mental arithmetic without being taught is so different from others, a teacher may not have met more than one or two kids like her. And some of the kids here are past this level.

So, I can see that a teacher who hasn't been exposed to highly gifted kids could be skeptical or not understand the child. In a situation like this, I see nothing wrong with proving to her that your child is very bright, especially if you think your daughter needs something she isn't getting at (pre)school.

Please note that I am not advocating for frenzied test prep (FTP) here, nor do I think you are! FTP is not the same as teaching an enthusiastic little kid how to read (or, in the case of my kids, "how to wead.")

Val

I taught my son to read at that age. It seemed like an extension of his learning the names for everything so easily. So I taught him the letter sounds by making a PowerPoint presentation with one really big letter per slide. He would sit on my lap and we would "do letters" as he called it. Once he knew the single letters, I made slides where the letters would appear one at a time to form words. He was able to sound out CVC words before he was 3 and he read Bob Books soon after. I eventually extended this approach to vowel digraphs and so forth.

I wouldn't call what we did hot housing. It's not hot housing if it grows that way naturally.

Agreed-- it isn't "hothousing" if the learner is eager and capable.

Also consider the following:

a) if you DO NOT 'teach' a child who is ready and interested in learning, they will often find a way themselves. It may not be as pedagogically sound, either. (Whole language reading is definitely not as good an idea as phonetic learning, if one has a choice...)

b) kids that learn to read early and with great fluency will never fully relate to same-age peers again until adulthood, and maybe not even then. Think about it. A child that is four and reading Mary Poppins for the first time is experiencing that work VERY differently than a nine-year-old child who is discovering that book. You only get to "discover" a book once, and the mental age at which it happens forever alters your perceptions of the story. My daughter, for example, will forever identify strongly with Anne Frank as "a girl just like me" rather than placing that work primarily in the larger context of Hitler's regime. Reading ahead of your peers changes things. It makes up part of the "gifted" experience of the world.

Neither of those things argues particularly strongly one way or the other.

I will say that I think Val is absolutely correct, though-- most of the people that dealt with my daughter up until she was about four really didn't go "Wow-- she's sure bright." It was more like head scratching and "Hmmm. That's odd."

They simply didn't have a context in which to place their observations. So it was "quirky" or "singular" behavior. Looking back on that, it is clear (now) that it was often that they'd simply never seen another EG/PG child up close.

It wasn't until she started demonstrating traditional academic skills like math and literacy that she started making strangers' eyes bug.

I definitely regret listening to the "professional teachers" in my own family that stridently insisted that teaching my then-eager 2yo to read would be "harming" her in some way. We waited until she was nearly four before formally approaching decoding skills with phonetically controlled material. It's obvious that she was ready well before her second birthday, looking back; we were the ones that weren't ready. LOL.

Methods that I think are entirely appropriate for little ones (<3) include magnetic letters, letter games (Peggy Kaye's Games for Reading is a gem of a book), and of course the Bob books if your child likes them, though mine preferred the slightly more snarky tone and full color illustrations of Now I'm Reading instead. DD would remind me that "those come with stickers." LOL.

Oh, and we used Montessori methods, too-- tracing letters, etc. It was low-pressure and just plain fun.

This is interesting. I've long thought that giftedness is MOST evident before age 6 or so, mostly because differences are so much more obvious at very young ages. A six-year-old reading Bob books? That's expected. Chapter books for the first time? Hey, the kid's bright. But a two or three-year-old doing either? That's very unusual or extremely unusual. Even more telling is that a child who is very young can RETAIN information about how to read and progress. I've overheard a couple conversations about six-year-olds with the parents saying that they'd taught the child to read a year ago, but s/he hadn't progressed. This is normal --- except with HG+ kids.

For this reason, I'm not sure why GATE testing seems to mostly start at the end of 3rd grade, for 4th grade. It makes no sense to me.

Please don't take this the wrong way, because believe me, I have been there - but why is it important for you that the teacher knows she is gifted? Is there something (in terms of accommodation) that you would like for your child? It might be easier to say something like dd3 really likes to put together puzzles with lots of pieces - would it be OK if I donated a few to the classroom?

As the mother of three children who read before three, it has been my experience that having them read at that age will not necessarily translate into the teacher "getting it". I've been down that road with my first one. My middle daughter (now three) can read and it was clear from her "report card" that the teacher has absolutely no idea. The report card noted, "dd3 now knows all her letters!" (uh yah, thanks for joining us a few years late.) I am debating as to whether or not it is necessary to even mention the fact that she can read to the teacher. Sorry - I think I am just a bit jaded from my first.

As far as the hot-housing - I don't see anything wrong with supporting your child to do their best work. Being challenged and accomplishing things (whether it is mastering reading or putting on your jacket) are an important source of self esteem. There is a fine line between pushing and supporting - but it seems like you are being pretty reflective about that.

Oh this is why I love this forum! Where else would this get treated as a normal question?

I guess I've been afraid of turning her off by turning it into "lessons," and I'm just letting her have fun with it. (She went through an earlier phase at <2 when she learned most of the alphabet for fun, and then lost interest.) She is not one of those blatantly ready can't-stop-them early readers. But I might try her on the Powerpoint idea and see if she enjoys it.

As far as I know, that conclusion is based on kids who are average or even behind, and have to be laboriously taught how to read. I'm not sure it applies to early learners. Really expert readers end up using both phonology and whole word recognition, and it probably doesn't matter which they start with.

Exactly! It's like these are some kind of holy grail. We just don't have simple objective ways to measure other manifestations of early intelligence, so they simply get overlooked.

I wouldn't say it's important for them to know that she is "gifted." It's important to me that they get her. That they understand who she is and what is going on in her mind. I think this is because I have an excellent relationship with the staff of this preschool and I really respect their skills and abilities. I love talking to them about what Hanni is doing in the classroom, what progress she's making in social/emotional development, where she's at with potty training, etc. I really feel like they're on my side and I can trust them. That's why it feels so weird that there is this gulf, this aspect of her where they are just not seeing her. I'd like to be able to talk to them about her cognitive development without sounding like the delusional pushy mom.

I may be projecting my experience onto your post, but I think raising a child who is gifted can be a little anxiety provoking. It does feel like a big responsibility. Maybe if those teachers in that little classroom understood what's up with your child, it might feel like they were carrying some of the weight. They might even be able to be on the alert in case your child was "having trouble" socially. It might feel like they were in your corner.

I was lucky to have a couple of preschool/Kindergarten teachers that "got" my child way before I did. They had to give me the "do you realize your child is doing xyz" talks. There is something extremely comforting in knowing that your child's teacher gets her. That's she is in a safe place where she won't be misunderstood, and that she might even get to flourish.

I think training on identifying and understanding gifted children should be part of the requirements for anyone teaching preschoolers.

And there's really nothing I would change about her preschool experience. They have an incredibly enriched and varied environment, with creative and engaged teachers. I've idly thought about asking for her to skip to the pre-K room next year, but honestly, she's so happy and stimulated with her current group that I see no reason to. (It helps that she's the youngest in her group, and I'd say that 6 out of the 10 kids are at least moderately gifted.)

Confessions of a guilty hot-houser:

Mine was "reading" cartoons off the tv guide channel at that age. �At least yours is reading books. �And I think what I'm doing is hothousing because I bought him elementary school software and showed him how to write letters. �And I know I "hothoused seatwork" because that's what I was told I was doing, even though that's not what I called it when I did it. �I sat him down for 15 minutes a day to get him used to sitting down and doing what he's told, or listening to someone teach him something. �He doesn't go to Sunday school, he doesn't go to preschool. �I thought it would make him better disciplined. �I slacked off at the end of my pregnancy and we started recently doing the instructions again. �
When I did slack off he still did his educational software, which is always at his request. �I'm so evil i thought, good. �He wants to learn. �I've got him in the habit of studying. �Mwah-ha-ha. �He's got choices. �He's got the firefox kidzui which is every kid brain candy from nickelodeon, Disney, even YouTube. �Not to mention a room full of toys and a yard to play in and a t.v. �But everytime he finishes an educational software, book, and toy I buy him a new one. �

Is it hothousing if you just raise your kid? �I'm so confused. �Maybe I'm not so confused if I don't care what it's called. :P
If you want to brainwash them with a formal education I'll text you my shopping list. �I think we've been doing pretty good. �I had this argument~I mean conversation last year when I was a total rookie mom, and very vulnerable, and unsure. �Hothousing can't just mean teaching your kid stuff, not if it's a big insult like everyone makes it sound. �It would have to mean something like trying to turn an apple seed into an orange tree (and being disappointed), or, I read a blog link that likened it to a pair of pinetrees on a hill, one of which was deformed from someone trying to bonsai or topiary it into the shape she wanted regardless of it's nature. �That was supposed to be an argument against early formal education, but of course that's not how I read it. �

Eta: I'm not all for those daycares that have two year olds sit still at a desk all day and sit on their hands if they can't sit still. �Yes, they exist. �That's (censored).

Hi La Texican,

What I meant by hothousing was pushing the reading thing artificially (i.e. beyond her natural interest) when there's no pedagogical or cognitive-developmental reason for her to learn it at this age. And doing it for me and my ego, not for her.

That's good and concise definition of hothousing.

If your teachers don't get your daughter, it's possible that they just haven't been exposed to someone as bright as her. Maybe they can learn from her, too. It sounds like they're quite capable, from what you wrote.

Don't know about anyone else here, but in spite of having been ID'd as gifted as a kid, I didn't really get what it was about until I had kids myself and started reading about it. Could be the same with your daughter's teachers. And if they start to understand her, they could start looking for similar characteristics in other kids.

Oh, I definitely knew that I didn't look at the world (or experience it the way others did) by the time I was in third grade or so.



What I mean by "if you have a choice" about reading pedagogy is that many GT kids teach themselves out of sheer determination.

Unfortunately, you can't "un-learn" the way you learned to read.

While phonemic methods are certainly just about the ONLY way to teach struggling students how to read...

the phonetic method is definitely superior for teaching a variety of HIGHER literacy skills later. That is why seeing literacy in those terms is a distinct advantage-- even for gifted learners.

Spelling, root word identification, prefix/suffix identification, and contextual vocabulary building all are given a little boost by reading phonetically rather than with a purely whole language approach.

It's the way that higher mathematics is taught, as well. It's an algorithmic approach rather than a one which is based on empirical experience. (Reading words you've never seen is much less intimidating if you've learned how to approach things phonetically.)

That's all. I'm well aware that many gifted children initially learn to read using other means, and that fluent literacy tends to eventually rely pretty heavily on whole language skills. But I don't think that speaks to the superiority/efficiency of those methods of acquiring basic literacy so much as it does that we aren't offering little ones anything that they can get their teeth into, so they improvise instead. It's certainly where my daughter was headed, in spite of our AVOIDANCE (so not kidding) of direct instruction.

Why not offer a little phonemic awareness and see where it goes, YK? There's a lot of difference between that and pushing academics. Between the Lions was a PBS show that DD was enthralled by at two and three. Well, that and Elmo. LOL.

In my experience early reading doesn't make people "get" your child. Really precocious reading is sometimes totally ignored because people simply have no frame of reference and don't even process that the kid is actually reading. And, of course there is also the option that people will suggest the child is hyperlexic, autistic, or some kind of savant.

If there is something specific your daughter needs at preschool that she isn't getting I would talk to the teacher about it. From where I sit preschool was the best time because playing outside, playdough, blocks... it was gifted neutral.

... or that you as a parent must have a lot of unresolved issues. Enmeshment, much?




I'm kidding of course. Well, kind of. People do say those kinds of things.

I've been accused of "stealing" my daughter's childhood by accepting radical acceleration for her, for example. <sigh>

Yes, I had a tremendous urge to "work with daughter" DD4 (as in structured open-ended learning beyond PK letter/color/shape identification). I resisted until she completed Mild Asperger's diagnosis and then gifted testing 2 months ago. She is 2E..

I wanted her tested as she was..In a natural state, per say. Does she really read/decipher/decode words? Can she really memorize a rural to urban road trip turn by turn after just one trip? on and on.. Am I crazy?

Her 3 year old preschool did not see the thought patterns that screamed..I think in a special way! She was bored out of her mind and planning a way out with behaviors.

Four year old PK teacher is much more in tune.. Yet I still do not get the feedback that I expect...Why don't they get it? Does anyone have the time and energy to get it? Do they want to get it? ..Or is it easier to keep the learners in a manageable pack?.. If I say what I want to say it never seems to sound right.

And so ..I started working with DD4 beyond reading stories..Not beyond common sense. Thirty minutes or less in a structured way on various tasks/concepts reward at the end with a maze..her favorite. My mindset has moved from making a point, waking up PK teachers to working with daughter as a way to enjoy the possibilities and prepare for the next challenge.

I agree with PTP. Early reading never seemed to help anyone appreciate giftedness in my children. Honestly, nothing seemed to help our encounters with teachers early on -- not test scores, not interest, not ability, not depth of understanding, not vocabulary. I found that once my children were in other environments including private instruction, clubs, online environments, courses with higher level teachers or professors, then suddenly their abilities were appreciated and celebrated.

MegMeg -- I would hope your DD's preschool teachers would appreciate her capacity, but please don't be surprised if this doesn't happen. I had one K report card that announced to me that my child could recognize letters when he'd been reading for almost 4 years by then. It's been my experience that recognition of unusual gifts says more about the person recognizing than the student being observed!

I was just admitting I'm pretty sure I do hothouse. I don't have a problem with it at all if you want to be excited secretly over the thought that your Daughter might really be learning to read at a really young age and it might be making you feel a little bit giddy, even if you're guilty about it. I posted my snark on the social taboo before, or at the same time a few other posts went up taking the thread firmly in the direction of teachers "getting" the depth of a gifted baby, etc.
Can i add that I'm very afraid the teachers or other mothers at the school won't "get" me, when my kids are old enough to start school. And I hope the "hothousing" accusations is an Internet phenomenon and not really a real thing.

Well, in truth most other people are way too polite to say so to your face.


They mostly use anonymity there, or snipe to others about your obvious deficiencies as a person.

Make no mistake, it isn't everyone, by any means. But for some parents that really do seem to measure their self-worth by some cosmic competition to see whose kids are "better" than theirs, this is pretty much a given.

THOSE people are absolutely toxic to parents of GT kids. They'll dig and dig for ANYTHING that seems to be a potential flaw in you, your parenting, or your child... and then crow about it. Passive-aggressively, of course... so it always sounds as though it is "concern" for your family.

But it isn't. (I find that kind worth active avoidance myself.)

Our son's "early reading" has kept me wondering "how" since the beginning.

He started reading words at two+ and would often "read" books. I quoted "read" because we never thought he was actually reading -- we figured it was just memorization, as he'd long been demonstrating a keen memory.

And then one day, shortly after turning three, he got a new book as a gift and promptly sat down and read it front to back. It was a 2nd grade book.

We were amazed and, naturally, had to try out this little guy's new found skills. He was reading just about anything we'd put in front of his face. He rarely, if ever, went through the process of sounding out words, and his fluency and expression were tremendous.

Where did this come from? We taught him the alphabet on the refrigerator, along with his name and things like that -- nothing else. We did read to him constantly, and he had a voracious appetite. Reading for a solid hour every night was common, if not typical. But how he made the connection between the spoken & written word is still a mystery. (We never followed along with our finger or anything like that.)

It wasn't long after that we started to switch off our reading, alternating a page or so at a time. What still stands out in my mind is the way he tackled new words -- he'd take a whole word approach based on (I'm assuming) similar words bouncing around his skull. When he pronounced a work incorrectly, I'd give him the correct pronunciation and that was that. He would rarely miss a word twice.

When he got into school, I remember that the whole process of phonics absolutely drove him batty. And when he had to do a whole page of marking the vowel and circling "special sounds," I thought he would totally lose it. (To this day, I still don't know the difference between a special and not-so-special sound.)

Sorry to drone on... our son is now nine and as we are enjoying a more typical language development with his sibling, I'm even more stunned by what he pulled off at such a young age.

I have four kids, and three of them learned to read before age 3.The first one would ask me to read books so many times that he would memorize them. He was 2.9 by the time I realized he also memorized the words I read. It did not help him in school at all. When he started kindergarten I mentioned to his teacher he could read, and she said that children memorized books at that age. I insisted, she insisted, I dropped the subject. In late November she "amazedly" told me that my son read at a third grade level. He had been writing and reading the alphabet as assigned for over two months. After been assessed at a third grade level, he continued to do the exact same thing as every one else (since the teacher kept the work the same for all anyway). For my next three, I've decided to home-school. The last one was pretending to read from baby hood, by 2 I decided to try teaching her some phonics, since she begged to study like her siblings. She learned the letter sounds immediately, but then lost interest. A couple of weeks before she turned three, she started asking to learn to read, so I decided to start teaching her two and three letter words, and was getting nowhere. Ds8 told me why don't I just read the books to her and point at the word. I though that it would be too hard, but I asked dd3 if she wanted me to point, and she said yes. Amazingly, after reading a book a couple of times, she could read almost the whole book. I realized that phonics would not work for her at this time, so I continued to point to the words while I read beginner books to her. I bought a ten pack book set, and added one almost every day. She averaged 10-12 new words a day. She has progressed so well using this method, that after 30 of this small books, I stopped pointing, and she could pick up any beginner book, and just ask me some words she didn't know. We have over a hundred beginner books, but now, she decided she doesn't like beginner books. She wants to read more advanced books, so now she will only read those nickelodeon Dora books, I believe they're about a second grade level. She picks them up, and starts reading them, and asks for help when she doesn't know a word.

I'm sorry to get so long-winded, but I just wanted to paint a picture of the situation. The bottom line is that I don't think that helping a two or three year old learn to read is hot-housing, if done in an easy playful manner. If the child is ready to learn to read, he or she will learn quickly, if not, pushing will not get the child reading, specially not that quickly. I've met people that would start trying to teach their child to read at two, and the child would start reading at four.

The only thing I can say about early reading, is that children are usually happier for it, and it helps us parents keep our sanity. If my children did not learn to read early, then I would have had to read and explain everything all day! As soon as they learned to read, my children kept themselves busy for hours! For example, dd3 reads her books by herself for over an hour everyday, during which time I can have some uninterrupted time to focus on teaching her siblings. So, I highly recommend that you try to teach your child to read. It should take no more than 10 minutes a day, longer than that, and the child may get too tired. You'd be surprised how much and how fast a child can learn in ten minutes, provided its done consistently. If that doesn't work, pointing to the words as you read may work, as it did with my dd3. You'll probably be reading anyway, so pointing to the words doesn't take that much extra time.
Good luck, wish you the best!

I wish people would "get" DS more also. His preschool is good, he likes it. But his teachers don't really get him. He doesn't imitate the finger play stuff at song time, he wanders off a lot, he doesn't follow directions well, he's not really toilet trained, he doesn't talk to the other kids (except the older ones, he tries to play with them but hasn't got nearly enough social skills yet to pull it off). He often seems like a glaze-eyed homeless man stuck in a 3 year old's body.

For example I was there recently when he was asked to help out and put his nametag in a basket 10 feet away. He happily starts to but great ideas overtake him moments into the short walk and he drops the nametag on the ground, veers from his course, and talking all the while (but quiet enough he can not be easily understood), wanders off to stare at a bush and gesticulate. Then full on ignores the teacher when she repeatedly calls his name trying to direct him back to the task. Now if she'd had a good reason, or if she'd said "or I'll be mad" or sad or something, he'd have been right over there trying to fix the situation, not that she knows that. She's nice though, so she just smiles as I pick up the nametag.

At least here they are laid back and are not too worried about him, they see him as a immature 3 year old. I wish they would see more to him. I think they see his early reading as a interesting anomaly. Maybe they think he's sort of a blank slate waiting to get obedient and polite enough to be opened to the fun he could have. There's a 4 year old girl who is gifted there, tries to please, perfect pronunciation, writes, reads a little, lots of friends. That's sort of how I imagined gifted would be and the teachers totally get her.

I catch myself wishing DS would learn to write (a few attempts but he'll make half a letter and then storm off in perfectionistic frustration). I wish I could hothouse him to make him write -- then they'd have to understand him more, maybe bother him less about doing the hokey pokey. But nothing happens when I put a pen in his hand and say "oh look what fun, lets make letters!" He says something like, "no, why don't you go have fun making letters. I'm going to make a cage for my pet eagle Birdezeh, look I'm wearing gloves so his talons don't hurt me. I need some meat, do we have any meat?..." So so far hothousing hasn't really worked.

Polly

I recall this feeling the desire to have dd4 read well early, partly because it would just be interesting, but partly because she was doing everything else so early, it just seemed inevitable. But so far she is just about normal in reading for a 4 year old. Lots of sight words, some attempts at sentence reading, etc. Her vocab is crazy big, uses words like mimic instead of copy, 'mock', 'literally', etc.
Convincing the preschool to have her in K was part of the reason too, but in the end other things convinced them that she should at least try, and either way her reading will progress as she sees fit.
Ds10 was pretty normal in his starting reading but after getting the ball rolling did shoot up several grade levels very quickly, so I wonder if dd will do that as well.

"when there's no pedagogical or cognitive-developmental reason"

How much of a reason is there for the standard time frames? I don't remember any of it making much sence. When I talk to people (I was browsing curriculum books on a discount shelf a few weeks ago, and those were VERY nonsensicle about when to teach what -- to the point of "teaching" completely inaccurate information most of the time in an effort, I think, to make it accessible to the age group they immagined) it never makes much sence at all. As far as I can tell, 90% of the "teaching" people's kids get in school is really compliance. Not so much "can you read this?" but "will you read this when I tell you to, the way I tell you to?"

It seems to me that a "pedagogic" reason for teaching something would be something like the "proximal development" stuff, or else some kind of formalized structure for noting a child's interests and attentions. A cognitive-developmental reason would be something like "readers who learned between the ages of X and Y have brains structured more like Z" where Z is desirable.

I don't think there's much of either of those in formal schooling.

Which is not to say I'd try and hot-house reading so a teacher will "get it," though that might count as a "social developmental reason." I have serious doubts about wether it would WORK. When DS (then 19 mos) went to an SLP, despite having to tick off a whole lot of ahead-of-age-range boxes on her form, she declaired him "delayed." She even inserted the modifier "insignificant" apparently to clarify the situation. She just wasn't interested in seeing a kid with a small spoken vocabularly as a successful communicator. Lots of people won't be interested in seeing a young child as a reader. People usually see what they expect to see.

If I wanted a DCP to "Get" my kid better, I'd just talk to them about him candidly. Not sure that would work EITHER, mind you. Actually I have nothing useful to say. But wanted to point out that the standard ages aren't magical as far as I can tell.

-Mich

If you added early reading to that I bet you'd start hearing suggestions he should get tested for autism spectrum disorders.

Do you think there is any chance he needs more help to understand the routine and expectations of the classroom. Some kids, including bright ones, who do not have disorders of any kind, do need more explicit instruction to pick up on this stuff.

That's almost exactly our experience, too. Before (I think!) he could truly read, he used to recite long passages from his favourite books, with or without the book in front of him. My theory is that that memory, combined with an analytical gift that now shows up in maths, made it inevitable that he'd teach himself to read. He had a whole shelf full of Rosetta stones...

For the record, DS now 7 learned to read sometime between 2.5-3 years old (I don't know exactly because he was self-taught, and we didn't recognize it until a few weeks before he turned 3). And even with that knowledge, his preschool didn't get it. It wasn't until they were told he was grade skipped because he was brighter than the average bear that they got it and tried to take credit for it (at my DD's pre-k meeting)!!!!

So, if she does learn to read, they will just blame you for hot-housing, whether you did or not.

I have always found it interesting that parents of normally developing kids are encouraged to provide a literacy-rich and number-rich environment and to make sure that their kids have the basic skills needed to enter schooling, but parents of gifted kids are accused of providing an enriching environment that has overprepared their childrend for schooling. Eventhough our school has seen my kids scores and has subject and grade accelerated them, it is often mentioned, as a way of negating the extreme scores, that we provide an enriching home life to them. All I do is read to my kids and take them fun places, just like everyone is encouraged to do, but it's used against me. So, unfortunately, even when people see what your child can do, people tend to try to explain it away to make the unusual things they are seeing in your child more usual and more in line with their expectations. I think that the only way that you're going to get others to see your daughter more for who she truly is is to share stories and have lots of casual conversations with the teachers so that they get to know both your DD and you (so that they can see that you are not a pushy-parent).

And I agree with what Mich said. Teaching all kids to begin the process of reading in K because they are supposedly at precisely the right age and the right development stage is much more random than watching for the signs in a child to see if they are ready to read. Who says 5 is the perfect age? Clearly your DD is saying that 5 isn't the age for her. So I see nothing wrong with working a little bit of reading guidance into your day. You're clearly introspective enough that you won't push her beyond what she's interested in and ready for. And, how is teaching reading any different then teaching shoe-tying or zippering or toileting or any of those other things that you're expected to teach? You're just trying to give her what she needs.

Couldn't agree more. Maybe it's just something about the American mentality that says acknowledging one person is intellectually gifted is somehow elitist or unfair, and therefore it needs to be explained away by unhealthy or pushy parenting. Strange that it's perfectly acceptable for a kid to be athletically talented, and the parents are not necessarily accused of hothousing the child's athletic gifts when they provide activities to further that talent -- that seems encouraged as long as the child enjoys the activity.

I know that would be true in our case, so I don't have to read the same books, which he memorized, over and over again.

How do you teach a toddler to read?

MegMeg, I have to say that I had similar thoughts about DS9 when he was very young and was talking, reading, etc... early. I kind of equated it to the same pride or excitement I felt when the kids took their first steps or said their first words. You know they're on the brink, and it's an exciting time. You think, "You can do it!!!" and you are eager for them to succeed at it. You also have reasons that it would be beneficial for your DD's abilities to be more obvious to the teachers. I get it. BTDT. I don't think it's anything unhealthy. As other posters have said, it's not hothousing when it's something SHE is doing on her own. And IMHO your attitude is totally normal.

QFT.

In our experience, I don't really think you can "teach a toddler to read." Both our DC learned to read on their own.

From the time DS9 was about 15 months, when we'd tell him it was the last book for the night, he'd say, "One last more, Mama!" and I'd tell him, "OK, this is one last more and then you go to sleep." By about 3, he'd taught himself to read, but wanted us to read to him through about age 5 or 6, for books that were above his level. We still do that from time to time, although the reading time before bed is never enough for him, so he usually just takes the book that we've started and reads it on his own after a couple nights. I've missed out on some books I've really wanted to read that way. *lol*

DS7 has less interest in reading books on his own than DS9, but is very capable of it. We never tried to teach him to read. The ability just seemed to appear sometime between his 4th and 5th birthdays. DS9 claims he taught DS7 to read, but other than the pressure the younger DS felt to keep up with his older brother, I don't think there was a lot DS9 did.

This was our experience anyway. I'll be interested to read what others have seen.

Well, based on my own experience here?

Much the same way you teach anything ELSE to your children.

Now, not all kids are eager to read very young, and for some kids, print materials and being read to are as much about emotional needs as intellectual ones. For my own child, that was not true; as soon as she COULD read, she definitely didn't have much desire for us to read aloud to her ever again. For her, the books were the point-- so we just handed her the key and she wanted to engage on her own terms.

BEFORE that, she wasn't just a kid that wanted to be read the same board books seven or eight times each night. No. She wanted to be read DIFFERENT books-- all day, every day. Relentlessly. I would literally be hoarse from reading to her, and she still wanted more.

So her learning to read was a tremendous relief to both of us-- it was like watching a crow fledge.

HOW did we do that? Roughly the same way that elementary teachers 'do' it, I'd say.

1. print-rich environments, and magnetic letters on the fridge. DD learned all of the phonemes and letter names first. This was very natural and fun. No drill. Just answering her questions and helping her with pronunciation.

2. Later, point-and-enunciate-by-phoneme with phonetically controlled books. Bob books or similar. "C-AAAA-T."


That's it. DD also watched Between the Lions for a while. But only because she LIKED it. At some point, she started reading words to US during reading aloud, and at that point, we stopped 'teaching' and let her do it her way.

I don't know if this is enough for kids that aren't GT, but I know that it was plenty for my DD. HTH.

I described the process I used to teach my 2.75yo to read in a previous post on this thread. I used the same approach as you would to teach reading to an older child (phonics based) but I modified it to make it toddler friendly by making reading lessons into cuddle time with mommy at the computer. Also having letters that were several inches high and farther away than one would normally hold a book is kinder to very young eyes.

This drives me batty too!!! I don't know if it's the desire to have everyone at the same level or the fear/guilt that from parents of kids not reading or teachers that we did something they should of, so to make them okay we become hothousers! And I am SOOO tired of reading the whole "what does early reading mean, it means nothing because I know a kid who did and then is having trouble at school or insert some other anecdotal story here" designed to negate advanced skills.

With DS we did letters and read books, he loved them early. And after 2 or maybe even earlier always followed with my finger so he was seeing and hearing. He was also a classifier, 3rd or 4th word - a point followed by a "at is" what's this, so he built an amazing unspoken vocab before speaking fluently. And we did starfall and we sped through it, he loved it. I didn't think we were doing anything out of the ordinary, but he was. He was processing the same intake as other kids much quicker. He learned whole words, so we thought it was memorization but isn't that reading, he loved and still does, signs, so exit in a restaurant and then he spotted it on the highway, this was around 3, but still, I read early and so thought cool, but not "gifted." so he read basic readers before 4 but went from Clifford to sophisticated 6th grade science books in about 6 months. My mom says I read at 4 but not what he reads. He got to chapter books absurdly quickly. He got basic phonics on star fall but that was before really reading and they are doing familiies and stuff in pre-k but he learns whole words,as someone else mentioned, only needs it identified once. But he is now sounding out on his own to match to his vocab and is doing it correctly. I don't think he is missing anything in terms of roots, he is just learning it in his order relevant to subject not lesson plan - we discussed exo and endo yesterday because of his dreamed up exothermic spacesuit.

I actually find this thread and what the kids here do fascinating. I asked a while back about mathy kids who spontaneously start multiplying, because mine doesn't/ or didn't although he is "ahead" in understanding about numbers. His gifts are verbal but also scientific, he makes connections there like the mathy kids do, I think he learned rules for reading by reading and listening, he was able to get them almost instaneously rather than needing drill and separation of topic into parts, same with science topics. It reminds me for any Madeline l'engle fans of the description of the tesseract with the ant and the string.

DeHe

Hi HelloBaby -- On how to teach a toddler to read... my rant, thank you for giving me a tidy way to insert it:

I notice well meaning parents pointing out letters to their kids -- "this is a D, can you say deeee?". But when does D sound like dee, only when followed by ee. It mostly sounds like duh. If kids learn letter names as the first thing they learn about reading (like when someone reads them their first ABC book and uses the letter names), those sounds have the possibility of getting linked mentally with appearance of the letters. Then if they do memorize that and they see the string of letters d-o-g, and a parent says "can you read it, say the letters quickly", they will say, "deeohjee". Which is not a word, and now they hit failure on their first attempt. This reading thing must be kind of complicated. An adult says, "That was a great try, reading's hard, you'll get it with practice. That was "dog". Hmmm -- Maybe we should learn what letters say".

So then there's a whole extra step of learning what all the letters say, like they are interesting species of animals. So now they know two things about each letter. They also know that letters are unpredictable, they have more than one sound. And there is also a understanding that reading is hard. So next time they see D-o-g they wonder, is it "duhowejee", is it deeoweguh, what is it. They feel tentative. The parent or whomever is teaching is still in the teaching role, the kid hasn't had any success and they've memorized by now 26 upper case names, 26 lower case names, now 26 upper case sounds and 26 lower case sounds. 104 random looking symbols that who knows, might go together in any order and do just about anything. Not to mention if someone accidently has pointed out what ch or th sounds like.

If all kids just learned a very few letters to start, 3 or 4 letters, just learning the sounds, it seems like it would be a lot easier. duh and ohh and guh, maybe mmm. A easy fun game very early helping mom or dad read one or a few words like "dog" and "mom", not some long drawn out two year process of memorizing letters. Then when there is confidence and interest, if it's there, add more. The confidence and good feeling, the "I can read!", was really helpful for DS for getting through the confusing bits like having to be told no, that ch didn't sound like kuh-huh.

Obviously there are lots of kids for whom symbols simply don't translate that early on. Or where memory doesn't keep it long enough to use it later. For whom there is some brain maturation that must take place before the shape D can get associated with a sound. So the ability to read early isn't going to be universal and that's just individuality. But it's not rare, I don't think the ability to read is rare, especially if they would ban the alphabet song.

Sorry -- ranting got away with me again... I just think so many K age kids struggle, thinking it's hard, when if right at the beginning it had been made much simpler then perhaps they would feel more of a can do attitude about it, build on successes, not remember a time when they couldn't read.

Polly

You can call it hot-housing.... We refer to it as feeding the monster! My DS was insatiable at a very early age. He was reading well before two and just as PTP suggested, it didn't seem to make his teachers "get him". In fact his first pre-K teacher viewed him as a PITA, because he refused to conform.

The rule in our house has always been to answer his questions and give him what he wants as far as learning is concerned. Because of this, my now DS8 has an excellent understanding of subjects that many never learn at all. He has chosen many things including mythology, economics and greek. To those that would call it hot-housing, I'd like to see them live with him for a week or two!

I've enjoyed reading everyone's responses and have to admit like HelloBaby I really have no clue how to teach a kid to read. I don't think I every learned the proper method myself either. My mom claims my dad (a former English teacher) "taught" me at some point during preschool but my dad denies it (and my mom's memory is really fault) so I'm not quite sure if I was taught to read early or not.

Regardless of that I know I was much more prone to be a whole word reader and still very much am to this day. I've always been good at figuring out words from the context. I do remember my dad and I always playing games to figure our what an unfamiliar word meant because he'd never tell me, he'd say either figure it out or go get the dictionary. I was always too lazy to get the dictionary so I preferred to figure it out myself. I still do this so much to this day that there has been times that I've read multiple words in DH's language and understood their meaning but I never made a connection to the spoken word until DH had me either read the passage out loud or we were discussing some sort of text.

I have a feeling DD's going down that path but who knows? I'm hoping she just magically figures it out on her own because I really have no clue how to teach phonics since I'm so bad at it myself. She does have some sight words and is really interested in the letters/sounds etc but right now she's much more focused on writing the letters than reading them.

I'm actually probably one of the parents that Polly was saying was teaching their kids incorrectly. However, I don't really get how you'd introduce the letters sounds since it depends on the context of the word? Also, she's read to in both languages (and, unfortunately, she always wants me to be the one reading to her, even in DH's language) so it just adds to the confusion. DD knows all her letters and knows some letters start with certain sounds that correspond to a letter but I really don't get how to proceed from there. Thankfully her interests seem to be in writing/math/puzzles/oral story telling at the moment so I'm hoping this is an issue that comes up later.

LOL-- agreed.
I call it "I'm not driving this bus; I'm merely along for the ride." Sometimes it can feel like Mr. Toad's WILD RIDE, but that's another story...
After you've lived with one of these voracious kids as a toddler/preschooler, it seems CRAZY to think that you even could "prevent" them from learning. I mean, maybe you could, but wouldn't it require the use of a sensory deprivation chamber?? That seems kind of, uh... wrong.



(I also like what Polly was saying about teaching little ones using a limited number of naturally more stable phonemes.... after all, how many different sounds DOES "d" make in the English language? Not many... With a bilingual household, I'd just skip the magnetic letters stage of things, or plan to include multiple phonemes/languages when you do "what thing start with that sound?" using letters. The one that kills me with alphabet books is U. U doesn't say "Unicorn" in ANYTHING but little girls' cute alphabet books. PHTTTTTH. And it sure isn't an YOOM-brella. LOL. I'd stay away from phonemes like "g" and "j" since those are less stable and/or because they are not the same in, say, Spanish and English, if I were working in both languages.)

Something else that is a very serious problem with very young, fluent readers, though...



vetting all that reading material. Because while some of them are content to read at a moderate rate, others rapidly begin to read in volumes that are nothing short of staggering. (We kept records of everything DD read-- she'd "put it in the book box" and I'd reshelve it after recording it-- the average was 1200-4000 pages a month when she was 6.)

My daughter was reading faster than my husband by the time she was seven, and was completely capable of reading adult materials at that point, probably sooner. Obviously, however, she was still seven.
At ten, she read darned near as fast as I do (and that is REALLY saying something, as I can polish off most best-sellers in a long afternoon).

Anyway. My point here is that I can't completely pre-read EVERYTHING that she reads. Just not possible-- and really hasn't been since she was about 8-9. I know enough to examine some genres very carefully (Sci-fi/fantasy and 'teen/YA' books in particular tend to have REALLY explicit content that is better suited to trashy romance novels. Not that there's anything wrong with trashy romance novels... but I don't think they're appropriate for my preteen).

I mine my friends' reading and my own for ideas. There are authors writing in the adult genre that frequently do NOT include much explicit material in their work. DD has enjoyed some of those things. We just have to be somewhat cautious about turning her completely loose with a library card. So we have some house rules that apply to reading content for her. If it's YA or adult, she has to at least ask us about it first, so that we can let her know if we give it a green, yellow, or red light for her personally. (This is individual and relates to a particular child's OE and maturity.)

Just wanted to give a head's up to those with toddlers/preschoolers that this journey can take you some very strange places. These are places that most parents never even know about, and so you might get "that look" even from librarians when you ask about appropriate content, or gently hint that you are "running out of" materials. Luckily for us, we have a children's librarian that has been a gem over the years. I wish I could clone her and put her in every public library in the world.

Advice on that front, just in general terms, is to look for children's materials with a copyright date prior to 1980; those tend to be less explicit or "edgy" overall, and more appropriate for younger readers. (Do be aware that violence or discrimination may be somewhat more open/accepted in those offerings, however.) My daughter burned through a lot of the pre-1970 Newbery books, L. Frank Baum's Oz series, Maud Hart Lovelace's books, The Boxcar Children, Trixie Belden, etc. As a bonus, they also tend to be written at a correspondingly higher literacy/Lexile level for the interest level. Lexile lists are useless for kids like mine. (Unless, of course, anyone truly thinks that Madame Bovary might really have been a good idea for my then-4th grade seven year old. Didn't think so. LOL.)

I agree with people having trouble with advanced intellectual ability. Just the other day I encountered it with a friend who said something to the extent of, "You do more with her than I do with mine." It stings and I find myself internalizing some anger and trying to understand my own reaction.

On the other hand, I think of all those kids who go to the Olympics and other advanced competitions and how many parents make similar comments about what their parents do.

Sometimes I wonder if there is such a thing as average and whether we are all not victims of the parental insecurity trap that haunts most of us. I often say that raising a child is the biggest experiment ever and we do not really know the outcome until they are around thirty. I know that I thought some of the stuff that I was doing was right and I look back and see the faults in it. My biggest culprit has been idealism and of course it has/had to be done perfectly!

It is like book Outliers which argues practice over prodigy (and the 10,000 hour rule - start practicing something young and hit that hour and bam you are awesome). Somewhere between American norms and Tiger motherhood is a balance.

There are hothousers among us. To each their own I guess. But for those who do not remember - you do more with your kids because they ask for more. And you do more because you are more. Even if my kids were not pg or gt, I still would be the one at the zoo, pool, museum, reading, playing, building... that they are intellectually older than chronologically just makes some of those fun choices seem odd to outsides.

May they all turn out happy and ready to chase their own dreams. We succeed by getting them ready and then getting out of their way ;-)

I have hothouse envy. My DD4.5 would never submit to it so even if I do get passing urges to see what I can teach her, she likes to be in control and keeps me in check.

My DD4.5 began reading when she was 2 and a half. How did I teach her? Well, we read all the time. She couldn't get enough of books. I bought magnetic letters that said their letter sounds when she was 1.5 and she learned all the letter sounds in less than a week and how to recognize upper and lower case letters and then never touched the letters again. She started asking me to spell out words for her. This is how she was teaching herself. I wrote some words for her and they became sight words, then suddenly I realized she had a ton of sight words. I got excited and got some flashcards (my only experience with them). I showed her the card, and she already knew it or could learn it seeing it once or twice. The cards were put on the shelf as useless. I never used a single flashcard again. She just didn't need it and rebelled against them anyway. She would not let me teach her to read. She wanted to do the entire thing her way. She was learning behind the scenes, but not showing me. She would accidentally read over my shoulder, or when she forgot to hide it, but didn't like to read too much aloud to me. When she finally read an entire longer book to me, it had long paragraphs and complex vocabulary (at 3). It brought tears to my eyes because she had only been giving me glimpses along the way of how much she knew.

Oh, the early reading, writing, drawing, storytelling, spelling, advanced vocabulary, math skills yadda yadda yadda didn't help her pre-k to truly see her gifts or to work with them anyway. Others have had better luck.

Now I have a DD who will be three soon and things are different. She easily learned letter names and sounds before two, knows how to spell a few things, knows a few sight words and can be coaxed to sound a few things out, but she is not in the same place as my DD 4.5 was at her age. She is a bright child, in fact, people comment on it all the time, but she doesn't have some of the things that really shocked me with my first: early reading, advanced drawing, early writing and spelling, amazing memory, and more facility with numbers before three. She (my younger child) is more empathetic, has more commonsense, is more coordinated, and has less quirks so she certainly has her strengths.

I do have urges to really teach the younger one to read, but don't want to push too much. Everyone thinks I have some master secret because my older child read so early, but I just lucked out.

It will be interesting to see how they both grow and change.

HA! I didn't even know the first one could read. Figured a little here or there. Preschool teacher just thought she had a photographic memory. Until an american girl catalogue arrived, she wanted a doll. She was going on 5. I said sure when you can read a book like that (chapter books that come with the dolls) you can. She made me take her to the library (as I believed everything in the house was memorized).

Yeah, doll's name is elizabeth. I don't know what I think about these teach your baby to read programs. Here seems like they wake up one day and you are left wondering - what the heck?

Some days it is awesome - you can relate on such a level when they are still little. Other days it is a little sad ... makes them seem older and the trick is to remember - they are still little kids ;-) I digress!

I often feel tinges of sadness as it seems we pass through stages faster than the other kids and I have a little one for such a short time. On the other hand both my kids communicated well at a young age and I wonder how one does it when they decide to wait to communicate. Having two kids has also really shown me how different the children can be from one another.

I am shaking my head in agreement with you on this one. DD8 was not quite 4 when she decided to let it be known to the rest of us she could read. I almost dropped supper all over the kitchen floor as she sat there reading a new book from the library to me with no problems at all! We had been snow bound and finally made it to the library and I had read a million books to her that day and really needed to get supper made. She wanted to read more, so I said she could read to me while I made the food. - I was definitely sitting there asking "What the heck? How did I not know you could read?" DH was even more shocked when he got home from school.

I would agree with others also that it isn't hot-housing if your learner is willing and able and eating it up. I don't see it as any different than any other parent helping their child learn to read - just that we tend to do it at an unusually early age.

When my now 16 yo DD came to us, she was 10. One of the first major issues we encountered was her insane jealousy of DS(then 2). He loved to look at her homework and could figure it out quicker than she could. It drove her crazy! Her education up to that point had been very spotty, 11 schools in 5 years while living on the street most of the time. She thought she was stupid and in her mind, DS proved it to her every day. She didn't have any experience with little kids at the time and didn't realize just how different he was.

We had many conversations about the trade offs. It never occurred to her that while DS was smart, his life came with a whole different set of problems. Making friends, fitting in etc were all brought to the table. "Who will take an 8 year old to prom?" I asked. He will have his BA before his drivers license. All of the things that she had to look forward to in her teen years. I made some headway, but it wasn't until I accepted another foster child in, a 5 yo boy, that she could make comparisons to that she finally started to really get it.

Now at 16, she wouldn't want to trade places with her brother. She once told me that she thought as he got older things would get easier because he wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb. Now that she is that teen, she thinks that it will get harder for him and she is sad that he won't ever get the whole "teen experience". It makes me sad too, but I have to tell myself that his teen years will be great, different but great. He gets to create his own "teen experience"!

thank you for this!! It is so easy to forget this, and then we start to question ourselves and our kids abilities too! so thank you again

Flower, I think I know how you feel. Sometimes my mouth just drops open when I hear this much older voice coming out of my tiny little child. It is such a mix of feelings. I can feel proud, sad, worried,impressed, and amazed all at the same time.