I am curious if any of you have similar experiences to us. I was identified HG and learned to read just before age 6 (between k and 1st). I am pretty sure I had some undiagnosed dyslexia, and still spell poorly. But I read well, and was reading several grades ahead by age 7. My strengths are more verbal than by husband, who is highly mathematically gifted, but started reading at 3.

DD10 learned to read around 5.5 to 6. She followed the same pattern as I did. No evidence of dyslexia, but we are going a formal neurocog evil this fall. She is bored (but also feels buried in HW) in what purports to be a full time gifted class.

Enter DD5. She is a young 5. When people listen to her talk, they make comments about early college programs, etc. Until a month ago, she loved stories but had zero interest in decoding words. Now she's interested, but is a very early reader and wants to do it all her own way. I don't have any personal inclination to push after my own and DD10s experience.

But the problem is that our district tests for gifted enrichment in K. I think in a year or so, she'd really benefit, but I see no way she is going to even complete, much less score well on a first grade level IOWA in a few months.

I find this assumption about early reading really frustrating. I just want to meet her needs.

Can you clarify? Specifically, I don't quite understand "very early reader and and wants to do it all her own way." By early, do you mean that she's only starting to sound out very basic words like cat or dog? Or are you referring to her age?

I recommend Bob books, which are a series of little books for children who are just starting to read. Also, there's an online system called Starfall that people here used to rave about. Here's an example question.

Have you offered to help her learn? If so, and if she's receptive, I'd work with her to see how it goes. If you have an wanting to do it her way means that she's not interested in help, it's a tough call. On the one hand, she's little and pushing little kids where they don't want to go doesn't always work out (maybe you could push a little and back off if she's really resistant?). On the other hand, you have a legitimate wish to help her in school, and gifted programming is a reasonable part of that.

I'd also look at some sample first grade Iowa tests. They may not be too hard.

My apologies. By early reader, I meant emergent reader. She is slowly working her way through the Bob books. This is new as she had zero interest a month or so ago. She was more receptive to her Montessori teacher asking her to do it than us. But while she is now proud of reading them, she gets very upset that she can't read bigger words. On one day, she asked me how to spell something. I don't recall the word but it was 7-8 letters long. I did not realize she had already tried to write it, and when I spelled it for her (I was cooking at the time), she burst into tears because she had "got it wrong." At that time she wasn't writing any words other than her name so there really was no way she could have done any better. I told her she had made a great guess at the word from the letters she had written, and was doing fine.


Her general pattern in most skills (from toddlerhood) is to be cautious and hesitant (and presumably practice on her own). So that suddenly we turn around one day and she's walking, skipping, singing on pitch, drawing intricate pictures, etc). The practice and lead up, is either internal, or surreptitious). It looks like she is or was trying to do that with reading, and hit an unexpected wall. At that point she maintained for a while that she no longer liked books. And no, we were not applying outside pressure about reading.

I will say one thing - we had some BOB books and both of my kids hate(d) them with a passion, to our surprise (although at school, DS6 seemed okay with them), so based on some recommendations here, we got a bunch of Brand New Readers which are very popular. DD4 has not shown any interest right now in decoding words, but she loves these books right now - she seems to be trying to figure it out (but won't let me "help" her so I leave her alone).

Since DS seemed to frustrate easily - he wanted to read but was cautious, DH tried to make silly word games (like using freezer magnets and then spell out "mess" and DS would come to me and say "Mommy, there is a mess in the kitchen!" - p00p was popular for this one) and flashlight in dark with sight words on the walls which seemed to help - although he was reading already apparently before we realized he was reading.

DS6 used to get extremely frustrated when he had to read to us so a while back, we started getting him to read the same favourites over and over again to build up fluency and confidence at the same time. With new books, we would take turns reading so that he would get to read the easier words and we read the rest. Actually in the beginning, we would only ask him to read one word per page and we always made it an easy one.

As for choice of books, the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems were a huge hit. Kevin Bolger also has a few really funny learn to read books that our boys love.

I love this idea!. I suspect she would get a kick out of it ( at least until DD10 makes a bit to take over the activity, but that's another issue.)

I will also look in to the other reader serries. DD10 likes Miss Rhonda's readers, but DD5 isn't quite there yet.

I would also urge that decoding level might progress quickly, and maintaining interest will become the bigger challenge.

This - DD6 went from nothing to HS level in 12 months, finding books at her level with appropriate content that are also interesting to a 6 year old is tricky. We went through a stage where she barely picked up a book for lack of interest.

All three of my children have been "late" readers, relative to level of giftedness, not national averages for age necessarily.

My eldest had significant dyslexia and a major delay for any child, let alone a gifted child. And in fact we were told more than once "Children this delayed don't ever recover to age norms, they fall further and further behind, the recovery is the clearest sign of her ability at the moment". She's now reading well in advance of her age, has been for some years, and is in fact 15k words into writing her first attempt at a novel.

The middle child learned the alphabet at 2 but didn't progress to reading until it occurred to me to put her in front of readingeggs.com at 4.5yrs, where upon she ripped through 60 levels in a weekend and progressed rapidly from there. I guess she was my "most advanced" reader for age.

My youngest child learned the alphabet in and out of order and started pointing out letters out in public by 18 months old, and also did not progress to reading. She looked perfectly average with her progress to reading through K (which she started at 4y10mths) and finished the year just barely at the national benchmark for end of K. I am quite sure she's not dyslexic, but she does probably have a relative weakness in phonemic awareness. By Mid yr 1 she was reading independently, three quarters of the way through yr1 I had her do the DORA test online and she came up with a mid gr6 reading level.

I have concluded that none of my kids take to decoding naturally, they're all quite dreadful at learning times tables too. Their learning to read is entirely comprehension driven, they can read words in context that they could never read from a list, and they struggle most horribly with words like "it" "and" and "the". As soon as they reach critical mass they improve at an exceptional rate.

Ds9 started school at 5 knowing the alphabet and sounds plus 20 to 30 sight words. By 5.5 he could read quite well and by 6 was several years ahead. Ds7 (who does not like to be taught or quizzed) knew the same number of sight word but not all the alphabet and sounds. He had a slightly slower start but was at roughly the same place on his sixth birthday (after one year at school).
I thought ds7 was going to read at 3 but he had a change in interest.

DS8 did not read early whatsoever. Then at 6.5 his reading took off. He was reading Harry Potter at 6.75.

You've just described my DD to a tee.

We have referred to her learning style as being either a "black box" or as a step function, if that resonates. I've never even caught her "practicing" things-- it's like the process is all inside her own brain.

She was not a particularly early reader-- but looking back on this, I regret NOT teaching her when she demonstrated developmental readiness at 18-24mo. The reason is that she has always had elements of perfectionism embedded in the way that she interacts with the world. That is, she HATES to make "mistakes" in demonstrating/exercising any skill, whether it is learning to walk, or writing a term paper.

She also hated the Bob books. She liked a different set of phonetically controlled readers, but she goes for humor and snark, so experiences might vary there. About 3 weeks of reading instruction in decoding, and she had the key that she needed. I don't really know just when she reached an adult plateau in decoding, but it was fairly rapid-- a few months, at most.

HTH.

If she's ready, she's ready-- helping her isn't going to hurt anything, in my opinion.

DD10 could read very early--CVC words by age 3, chapter books by 4.5.

But DS7 was more mysterious. He WANTED to read around age 3.5 but when I got the BOB books, he really struggled with them. By 5 he could read well but hated to read aloud and hated to sound out words. He skipped Kindergarten and went into 1st, where he was at the top of the class in reading, but his writing is atrocious and he couldn't spell to save his life most of the time. I dropped $$$ on 4 months of tutoring on the assumption that he'd missed something about phonics in skipping K that would help.

He started this year as a 6-year-old 2nd grader, likely still the best reader in his class, still wretched handwriting and spelling. He hates to read aloud and will rush and skip words when he does. His ped just referred him for private OT (because his handwriting isn't just WRETCHED, he still writes some backwards and starts at the bottom and so on) and if things are still wretched after a few months will consider evaluation for dyslexia or something.

"Black box" Learner fits. Ha. As an update, Reading Eggs appears to be the ticket and she is now progressing quickly. For the Record, I don't like the Bob books, and DD10 couldn't stand them (as she is much more into humor etc). But DD5 is a very earnest (sometimes rigid) child who is a lot like her dad. Her Montessori teacher handed her Bob books and now she MUST read them. Also, she can read them, which makes a big difference. She Still wants to rush through words with only glancing at them, but is progressing now. Thank you all for your suggestions and support.

My DD didn't start reading until halfway through kindergarten. She then took off like a rocket. I didn't learn (that I remember) until 7 and then took off in a similar manner.

My DW was a black box learner with speech - appeared delayed and then one day starting speaking by uttering complete sentences, according to her mother.

Bottom line - life is a distance race so don't sweat it.

This is a tough topic.

On the one hand, there is a huge range of "normal" for reading, including among gifted kids.

On the other hand, there are lots of gifted dyslexics who can easily look "grade level" - or more - but are able to mask just how hard they are struggling to keep up as the reading expectations escalate.

And just to complicate things, a large minority (US research suggests 40%) of people will not read easily or fluently without explicit, structured instruction in decoding. Most are not dyslexic, but they need the same kind of teaching to make reading automatic instead of a lot of work. Unlike speech, reading is not a natural activity our brains are programmed for.

So I have become a serious proselytizer for more explicit instruction, sooner, whether they're dyslexic or not. It helps so many and doesn't hurt anyone.

There are many people on this board who are themselves, and or their kids, both gifted and dyslexic and excellent readers. It is possible to read primarily by sight reading - memorizing words - rather than by decoding and with automaticity. A few here can do so with very high levels of fluency, speed and comprehension. But most dyslexics, gifted or not, can't. Reading without automaticity tends to demand vastly more brain resources than it should, and so crowds out other thinking, comprehension, analysis of what's being read. Reading is also just harder and more tiring than it needs to be.

So phonemic weakness is both extremely common and easy to fix. And in many ways, I have come to think of dyslexia itself as the wonder LD - there is so much you can do to actually remediate, not just work around, not just live with it. I'll grant you, if you have to afterschool remediation, it's not fast or painless, but it's remarkably effective. And the sooner you start the more it helps. Ideally, every kid should be properly taught how to read in the first place, rather than waiting until they fail to learn it because we never actually taught them how to do it.

Yeah, this is a bit of a sore spot of mine, how did you guess? 40 years, and the reading wars are still going strong. sigh.

Another thread of interest:
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/161965/all/Still_not_reading.html

And now we are back to the testing decision. She is now reading kindergarten readers and moving at a good rate. She still poops out quickly and reading seems draining. We just got the Cogat back and I am torn. She scored a bit higher than I expected (148), and the ITBS is in a week and a half. I think she would really benefit from the enrichment, but I doubt the ITBS will show it on the reading side (she would need to be over 95th percentile). And I don't know if she'll even get through the test. ( I have no concerns about the math). Grumble.

I suspect we will end up deciding the night before.

DD5 is what one would call an early reader (she knew her letters by 18 months and began recognizing sight words at 2), but she was never a really strong reader until she started Kindergarten. She's the poster child for "whole language" learning -- phonics and cvc words would stump her, as would easy sight words like "at" or "the", but she would memorize other words at an amazing rate and would often guess within context. When she tested on the MAP in September she was 91st percentile for K, so obviously advanced, but her teacher and I both recognized that she had been "stuck" on being an emergent reader for a while at that point. The guessing was killing us because she would see a word like "turtle" and just say whatever came to mind that started with a T and fit the story, so she just wasn't reading independently at all.

Now,she's the type of kid who does learn things spontaneously, so I can't be sure if direct instruction is what did it, but I definitely do think that it's her K teacher that made all the difference in her reading fluency. Her skills have completely shot up in the last two months. We are in a play-based classroom, and her teacher focuses on phonemic awareness, not sight words or even phonics. She doesn't tell the kids how to spell words if they ask (she wants them to think about the sounds), and she focuses on the rhythm of the words and the number of syllables, etc. Somehow, it awoke something in DD, who finally understands that words aren't things you just look at and immediately recognize, and that they have actual components to them. And now she's blowing through reading levels.

I'm not explaining it really well, but in short, I've seen a huge difference. I tried BOB Books and iRead and other phonics things and none of that clicked, but whatever her teacher did, she's gotten it now. Or it's spontaneous. Because you never know with gifted kids.

As a side note, the whole "not telling them how to spell a word" thing is very frustrating for her, because she's a perfectionist. She gets so mad when she sounds out a word and then later realizes it's not spelled that way, but since that's the way her teacher does it, I'm consistent about it at home too and the meltdowns over imperfection have greatly decreased.

Phonemic awareness is definitely the key for a great many children, both GT and otherwise. Not everyone gets it without direct instruction (in fact, about 30% do not). Also, even in high-cognitive children, there is a developmental component to grasping PA, which may have its own trajectory independent of other skills. Age four or five is about when it starts to develop in most children.

Sounds like all of those factors, and then some, came together for JBD's DC.

atnight, good to hear that your DC is beginning to have access to text. The lack of reading stamina is probably because she is still laboriously sounding out words, rather than calling any of them automatically, which means a lot of additional cognition and attention has to be devoted to the decoding process. This is normal in developing readers, but should lessen quickly over the next few months.