Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion 3yo can spell but can't read

Maybe... could you try leaving your DD notes that she can read to herself? Somewhere where she can read them without being seen, and something really low pressure, but will "trick" her.

For example, you could write: "there's (favourite treat) in the kitchen if you want some." ...or something like that. Then see if she comes into the kitchen

I tried this today. She brought the note to me and asked me to read it saying," mom, you know I can't read yet." Sigh!

MotherofToddler, thanks for sharing the interesting detail. From my limited research, the way I understood it was that children will start to call some of their scribbles as letter and later as words and in fact, complete notes and differentiate it from artwork between 2 and 3 years of age. However, they are still not writing recognizable words. But I think you are right in that children start to write simple words such as their names probably before they start reading. I was more concerned with the huge gap in writing/ spelling ability vs reading ability in my dd. thanks.

In the book it's more talking about kids learning to write and spell words phonetically before reading them. The author does not mean kids just pretending to spell or writing their own names but going through a process where they spell things wrong first (like the author's example of a 3-year-old writing HMPT DMPT for Humpty Dumpty), then learning to spell more things correctly, and then learning to read last.