Thanks so much for your detailed response. I actually admire parents who take the time to help their children learn to do things, esp. reading if the child enjoys it and there isn't a pressured situation, and am not touchy about hothousing at all. I'm oddly envious in a way because I love teaching (I was a teacher) but my DD4 likes to be in charge and we don't do structured learning yet.
I bought the Leapfrog fridge letters when she was a year and a half, slapped them on the fridge, and she taughter herself all the letter sounds a couple days later and I never touched them. To help her learn to read, I read tons of rhyming books when she was a baby to help with phonemic awareness, and traced my finger on words, and then there was a period when she was two years, maybe two and a half where she would ask me to write words, and so I did, then she started spelling out words so I one day I saw a pack of sight word flashcards for a dollar at Target and she knew every singe word in there and I was utterly shocked, really, shocked and that was the one and only time I tried flashcards. This was before her third birthday. I had no idea she knew all those words so for the most part I feel as though I have been trying to provide the right groundwork for reading--books, rhymes, songs, storytimes--but wasn't involved in the nuts and bolts of how she came to do it so now when I want to help her to go to another level, we haven't established that pattern and she just stubborn about wanting to learn things without "interference."
At this point, she can sound out and read words like constellation/ celebration / Antarctica / impressive / etc. so she really just need to read more to become more confident and fluent. I am just dying to know what goes on in that little head and feel left out of the process. She does read to me sometimes: reads my emails to me over my shoulder, reads things online, reads here and there in books to me, but I guess I am just greedy to hear more and I may have to wait and know she isn't showing me what is in there and I am just curious.
Yesterday we did play some games using stuffed animals and "they" will read and do learning type things. I think she has a perfectionistic streak that can get in her way with this, but in other settings, she is very confident. She doesn't want to do what others want her to do so she may just not do something if someone asked, even if they ask in a nice, playful way. It is strange because I have never pushed her, yet she just wants to do what she wants to do when she wants to do it and so I don't push because I want her to love learning and not feel she has to perform.
