It can be so perplexing to see your child do what seems to be stalling, punctuated by moments of brilliance.
Take my DS-almost-2.5, for instance. He started reading short words spontaneously at 21 months (just randomly pointing out words in new books), then went for months with no apparent reading. I could ask him to sound out a word and I'd get a blank stare. At times, I honestly questioned whether I'd hallucinated or exaggerated his earlier feats. Yet every so often, when we have a stack of new library books (emphasis on new-- I've never seen him do this with anything he's familiar with), I catch him whispering some of the text to himself while I'm emptying the dishwasher or tidying up.
These kids aren't all performers--or at least not universally across their interests. If DS didn't feel like talking, he could easily pass for a normal 2 year old truck-obsessed boy.
