By her seventh birthday, she was proudly reading frog and toad. Six months later, she was reading at a fifth grade level. But she wasn't early, and she wasn't self taught.
Sometimes I feel like the lone parent of a late reading gifted child. I think the fact that she didn't read early is in large part what made it hard for me to see her giftedness. I wonder how many more of us are out there!
you are not alone!
DD5 only began reading 3 months ago, though her comprehension has always been... uh, quite good. (i
still am kind of freaked out about some of the books i've read to her in the past few years -
Far From the Tree/The Emperor of All Maladies/etc)
given the fact she could sound things out at 2... and then her crazy comprehension level, i honestly couldn't figure it out. even though i personally didn't care if it took a few more years, it was just really weird. she was always obsessed with books, but showed little to no interest in learning to read.
then... this year, she had a horrible year in Pre-K and i was really forced to figure some stuff out. as it turns out, it was a combination of the following:
1) she'd been actually preventing herself from reading - literally glazing over when confronted with any/all text in order to stop her brain from working it out. this stemmed from her fear of being different - she obviously worked out how different she was YEARS before i did.
2) because of her comprehension, the early reader material just seemed pointless to her - most of it is just atrocious. once i told her she could skip the school readers and read chapter titles/ newspaper headlines instead, this got a tiny bit better.
3) once we figured that out... her perfectionism still really stood in her way. she has always seen herself as a great lover of books, and hearing herself read aloud so haltingly started killing her love for it. we fixed that by letting her stay up 15 minutes later and just read on her own... she can now read from any of the
Harry Potter books or
Alice in Wonderland - it's slow, and she's still only doing a little bit at a time, but... three months ago you couldn't pay her to read so i'm calling this a win!
ps -
Frog and Toad were our gateway books too, gabalyn - they're just so lovely.
