Hi,
Oli your child certainly does not sound average.
You asked about teaching reading. I'm a proponent of teaching reading early to any child that likes books and where the method can be tailored so they enjoy it. I base this on my son who is 26 months and reads short words phonetically and can piece together the meaning of some sentences, and enjoys it. It leads to a lot of conversation between us on topics I otherwise wouldn't realize to start, out in public reading things on signs etc. Like the other day we discussed what a bus stop is because he read "Bus Stop". I feel that I fall into the group of people who taught their kids to read. I don't feel I was pushy, there were no flashcards, but I did do things like make a game out of asking him to find a particular letter or word on a book page we were reading, ask him what sound particular words start with, etc. Much of his learning to read came about because he was delayed in talking (luckily caught up now) and on a late talker website I found a mention of starfall.com as being helpful to practice sounds/words. Once he saw/heard starfall he was hooked and asked to be read stories etc from it daily for as long as we would do it. Initially I balked at the amount of time he wanted to spend on it (and I felt bored clicking for him over and over, he is too impatient to click a button only once) but as he actually began learning to read I stopped worrying about it. After a few months, now he wants to play on it for only about 15 minutes a day, more to see particular favorite stories just like he likes particular books. No other website has seemed as good because the others I've found either are too repetitive or take too long to load each screen. Workbooks -- I bought a couple but he prefers to use them as coloring books so that's what they are currently.
I have not been able to make sense of the prohibition on early reading. It seems to be that in our culture children are considered cute and age appropriate if as early as possible they can sing in order a string of meaningless (to them) sounds (the alphabet song), or memorize meaningless phrases like "C is for cat". The reasoning behind this string of sounds and the odd pairing of the letter C with the word cat, should however be carefully kept from them for about 4 further years.
Worried that I am a hothousing parent I tried to look up the research on early reading being bad and honestly I could not find any well done original research that showed this, just lots of citing of particular citations that led to papers about slightly different questions. Would love to hear from anyone who can point to research I have missed.
Polly
