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So here's a question: Do you think that gifted kids learn to read differently than ND kids or just sooner (on average)?

My gut says differently, but I can't point to anything specific to say why except my experiences.

I read when I was 3, and I can't remember not reading. It just always seemed to be part of me. DS7 seems much the same. He wanted to read before he could sit up by himself. We have a picture of him holding a book and examining it with intense interest when he was supported by a Boppy. He would bounce when he wanted us to turn the page because he wasn't coordinated to do it himself yet. He taught himself his letters when he was just a few months past 1yo. Reading seemed in his blood, and it was as if his body just had to catch up.

OTOH, DS4 isn't 100% sure of all his letters yet. He certainly isn't as interested, so maybe that's part of it, but it also just seems less natural, less a part of him.

He might be GT, too. He's very verbal and taught himself to write practically overnight, so my comparison may be flawed. But it does seem like there's a difference between my early reader and my not-early reader.

What do you think, Cathy?

I'm not Cathy, but I'll jump in! Like you, I always remember reading, but I don't think I was three, probably more like 4. Definately before K. K wasn't my year! DD8 taught herself around 4. She definately started with phonics and I would guess whole word reading came a little later.
DD5 seemed to sight read at three, but it never developed into anything. I showed her how to sound the word out, she demonstrated that she could a little, but never really was interested in doing it.
Flash forward to now, she has been whole word reading only. She asks what a word is then it's memorized. She was reading by memorization only. She definately knew what she was reading, just did not attempt to sound anything out. And she is not spelling like DD8 was at this age and I wonder if it's because she doesn't understand phonics. I mentioned before the girls go to Score and they suggested that DD5 use Headsprout and told me she would learn phonics. I did feel it was important for her to understand how it(phonics) works. After 4 or 5 times on the program, she just starts sounding out words, it just clicked. They want her to move out of it, but I want her to finish just to solidify it for her.
Consequently, I'm not sure in the GT crowd the early reading factor can necessarily translate into levels of intellligence.
I've just been told by the psyd. that specialized in GT kids that he know believes that C-dog is more intelligent than older sis. He's supposed to be the best guy around here, so I won't second guess it. However, if he is right and she was screwing around the first time, I may have him attempt to re-test with the WISC or SB. Currently the school is using C-dog's lower score as a reason they can't accomodate her to the extent they accomodate big sis.
So yes, I think I can say with some certainty that younger sib can definately be a hider. Although, perhaps they are just intelligent in different ways.

This "intuitive grasp of phonics" must have been what my son used. He is adept at using his intuition for other things so this makes sense.

At 2 1/2, when there was no denying that my son was reading on his own, without having been taught, I remember looking online for a reading test of some kind. I was very curious about how well he could read. I remember that I found an online test that showed pictures of things, for example a log, and the child was supposed to choose between three words for the word that matched the picture. He was able to do this and he was able to identify some words that were spelled out for him, so he had to have some kind of intuitive grasp of phonics. This was before he started watching Between the Lions.

I did read to him with my finger underneath the words, so I think that might have helped him learn to read, but I did the same thing with my daughter when she was 2 1/2 and she didn't start reading until she was four and she didn't have the vision problem that he had. His comprehension was also at a higher level than hers at that age because he has always wanted to know the exact meaning and different meanings of words that he didn't know. He says he has always been a word nerd and that is how he talked me into buying the book Word Nerd at our recent trip to Barnes & Noble when I thought we already found too many books. At least they gave us a homeschool discount.

I wish I could ask my mother questions about how I learned to read and when. I know that she didn't seem that surprised when my son started reading at 2 but she wouldn't tell me why. I think my younger sister read very early, after I started school and started bringing home books. I remember my mother telling me that my sister ( 2 1/2 years younger) cried and couldn't understand why she couldn't go to school when I started. They didn't have preschool available back then.

I know that once I was taught to read in first grade, I was usually the best reader in the class, even though I was one of the youngest in the class, because I could finish my work early and pick out something to read from SRA, which I loved because I thought some of the stories were interesting and I could chart my progress. I felt good about being at the highest reading level in the class, but more importantly I felt in control of how fast and how much I learned. Even though I was very shy and didn't have a lot of friends, I felt good about that. My teachers encouraged me to learn.

At our public school, if kids finished early, they got to color. They thought something was wrong with my son because he didn't like to color and instead wanted to learn. The focus seemed to be more on making all kids the same and less on learning. It seemed like school was very different from what I remembered many years ago. I just assumed that our schools would have made improvements in their teaching methods but I was wrong.

Good morning! I love waking up to a lively discussion

My kids learned to read differently, but I don't know if that's correlated with LOG or not.

DD has loved books since she was an infant. I have a photo of her sitting in her bouncy seat looking at The Sneetches while Daddy read it to her when she was 5 days old. When DD was 3 she begged me to teach her to read. I had no idea that 3 yr olds could read, but I agreed to humor her. I taught her using phonics and she picked it up without a problem. By 4 she was reading easy readers. By 6 she was reading chapter books. By that time she was pretty much whole word reading.

DS was never into books as much as DD. But at 2 he was fascinated with a children's video called Letter Factory. He quickly memorized the whole video and learned the letter sounds that way. Then when he was 2 yr. 9 mos. I discovered that he could read words like CAT, DOG, etc. I was shocked! I assume that he picked it up from the video, from DD and from being read to. It really didn't occur to me to teach my two year old to read He seems to read mostly by word recognition. He really had to be prodded to sound out unfamiliar words, but he does that pretty well now.

As for me, I learned to read before going to K. I'm not sure how old I was but I remember my eureka moment. It really did come to me all at once when I was looking at a STOP sign. Suddenly, I read it and understood that it wasn't just a stop sign, it said STOP on it. I shouted out in the car, "Mommy! That sign says STOP!" She didn't understand what I meant, LOL. She thought I had just recognized the sign from its shape and color.

I wonder if a sort of photographic memory component of the brain comes in to play with the early readers who just start whole-word reading. (mind you, this is coming from someone with no scientific evidence - i'm just thinking out loud here!) I learned to read at 3 or 4, but I don't remember it. But I do know I have a "sort of" photographic memory recall, because when i'm taking a test, I can picture where in a textbook the answer is when I don't know it right off the top of my head. Maybe a visual/spatial brain is wired one way compared to others. I better stop with my nonscientific babbling with all you engineers out there!

DS4 seems to be the whole-word type reader, versus phonics, although he played a lot with the leapfrog fridge magnets when he was 1. But he was definitely read to a lot (hours a day - it was one of the few calming things I could do for mr. fussy infant).

St. Pauli Girl, I remember where things are in books that I've read and the layout of the page that things are on. I can't actually read the text and I don't usually remember the page number. But still, this ability came in really handy for writing research papers in college. I would just read the books, think about what I wanted to write, flip to the relevant quotes as I typed in it, done! My classmates were laboriously copying things onto 3x5 cards and making outlines, etc. For me, papers just came fully formed from my brain.

We sound like we were separated from birth! I always did my papers really fast, and was sooooooo irritated if we had to do more than one draft. What was the point? Combined with my underachieving, I pretty much just added one or two sentences to the second draft...

And I couldn't understand why everyone wanted to be in those darn study groups in law school. ugh!

Hello, twin!