Does anyone else have experience with late readers? [/quote]
Hi,
I wouldn't call 5 or even 6 or 7 a late reader necessarily. Your child might simply be average in the ability (or interest) in decoding print, and that may look out of sync with the rest of their abilities, but be entirely normal.
I'm thinking of my two brothers, both very gifted, one was doing some reading at 3 and the other showed little inclination and did not read before school instruction (which at the time began in 1st grade). That second brother was tested as a 4 year old at Stanford (I believe the Binet LM) and apparently received the highest score they'd ever seen in a 4 year old (and the LM was not new at the time). The other got a lower but still very high score. My parents were surprised because it was the early reader who also did lots of other energetically precocious things. As they grew up it became apparent that the tests were accurate, its the non-early-reading one that has more phenomenal abilities. He also has awkward printing and can barely do cursive writing to this day, can't draw more than a crude stick figure, and not for lack of practice as of course all through school everyone was working on his weak areas. It's a bit surprising he didn't read early because symbols (ie math/computing) ended up being his main strength.
My best guess on why for my brother didn't learn earlier was that he had an internally driven sense of what was important and what wasn't, didn't always include other people's, or standard, objectives. Expressed by passive disinterest rather than active resistance, made him seem a bit dull sometimes.
Polly
