Mine was another early self-taught reader. I think in the sense you mean he's been an independent reader at least since around the time he turned 3, maybe 2.5; but he was certainly younger than that when he started to like sitting and looking through books on his own, and I don't really know when he was first actually reading them. It's probably more to do with personality than with reading as such, though - he's always been very content to amuse himself much of the time. (I thank my lucky stars he's an introvert like both parents!) In terms of the mechanics of reading, my shorthand is that his reading age tracked roughly twice his chronological age from 2.5 for the next couple of years, but in fact by the time he started school at 4.5 he could read anything he was interested in, including adult science material, and when he got stuck on a word it would generally be because the word wasn't in his vocabulary at all, rather than because he couldn't decode it. Can't really answer the question about chapter books because the stage at which he was becoming competent to read them was also a stage in which he was much more interested in non-fiction books which aren't laid out that way. He had some favourite short chapter books at 3, but serious interest in fiction didn't really come till later (4, then more each year since).
Last edited by ColinsMum; 07/12/11 03:09 AM. Reason: too much irrelevant woffle
