Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Urge to hot-house?!?!?

I have four kids, and three of them learned to read before age 3.The first one would ask me to read books so many times that he would memorize them. He was 2.9 by the time I realized he also memorized the words I read. It did not help him in school at all. When he started kindergarten I mentioned to his teacher he could read, and she said that children memorized books at that age. I insisted, she insisted, I dropped the subject. In late November she "amazedly" told me that my son read at a third grade level. He had been writing and reading the alphabet as assigned for over two months. After been assessed at a third grade level, he continued to do the exact same thing as every one else (since the teacher kept the work the same for all anyway). For my next three, I've decided to home-school. The last one was pretending to read from baby hood, by 2 I decided to try teaching her some phonics, since she begged to study like her siblings. She learned the letter sounds immediately, but then lost interest. A couple of weeks before she turned three, she started asking to learn to read, so I decided to start teaching her two and three letter words, and was getting nowhere. Ds8 told me why don't I just read the books to her and point at the word. I though that it would be too hard, but I asked dd3 if she wanted me to point, and she said yes. Amazingly, after reading a book a couple of times, she could read almost the whole book. I realized that phonics would not work for her at this time, so I continued to point to the words while I read beginner books to her. I bought a ten pack book set, and added one almost every day. She averaged 10-12 new words a day. She has progressed so well using this method, that after 30 of this small books, I stopped pointing, and she could pick up any beginner book, and just ask me some words she didn't know. We have over a hundred beginner books, but now, she decided she doesn't like beginner books. She wants to read more advanced books, so now she will only read those nickelodeon Dora books, I believe they're about a second grade level. She picks them up, and starts reading them, and asks for help when she doesn't know a word.

I'm sorry to get so long-winded, but I just wanted to paint a picture of the situation. The bottom line is that I don't think that helping a two or three year old learn to read is hot-housing, if done in an easy playful manner. If the child is ready to learn to read, he or she will learn quickly, if not, pushing will not get the child reading, specially not that quickly. I've met people that would start trying to teach their child to read at two, and the child would start reading at four.

The only thing I can say about early reading, is that children are usually happier for it, and it helps us parents keep our sanity. If my children did not learn to read early, then I would have had to read and explain everything all day! As soon as they learned to read, my children kept themselves busy for hours! For example, dd3 reads her books by herself for over an hour everyday, during which time I can have some uninterrupted time to focus on teaching her siblings. So, I highly recommend that you try to teach your child to read. It should take no more than 10 minutes a day, longer than that, and the child may get too tired. You'd be surprised how much and how fast a child can learn in ten minutes, provided its done consistently. If that doesn't work, pointing to the words as you read may work, as it did with my dd3. You'll probably be reading anyway, so pointing to the words doesn't take that much extra time.
Good luck, wish you the best!

I wish people would "get" DS more also. His preschool is good, he likes it. But his teachers don't really get him. He doesn't imitate the finger play stuff at song time, he wanders off a lot, he doesn't follow directions well, he's not really toilet trained, he doesn't talk to the other kids (except the older ones, he tries to play with them but hasn't got nearly enough social skills yet to pull it off). He often seems like a glaze-eyed homeless man stuck in a 3 year old's body.

For example I was there recently when he was asked to help out and put his nametag in a basket 10 feet away. He happily starts to but great ideas overtake him moments into the short walk and he drops the nametag on the ground, veers from his course, and talking all the while (but quiet enough he can not be easily understood), wanders off to stare at a bush and gesticulate. Then full on ignores the teacher when she repeatedly calls his name trying to direct him back to the task. Now if she'd had a good reason, or if she'd said "or I'll be mad" or sad or something, he'd have been right over there trying to fix the situation, not that she knows that. She's nice though, so she just smiles as I pick up the nametag.

At least here they are laid back and are not too worried about him, they see him as a immature 3 year old. I wish they would see more to him. I think they see his early reading as a interesting anomaly. Maybe they think he's sort of a blank slate waiting to get obedient and polite enough to be opened to the fun he could have. There's a 4 year old girl who is gifted there, tries to please, perfect pronunciation, writes, reads a little, lots of friends. That's sort of how I imagined gifted would be and the teachers totally get her.

I catch myself wishing DS would learn to write (a few attempts but he'll make half a letter and then storm off in perfectionistic frustration). I wish I could hothouse him to make him write -- then they'd have to understand him more, maybe bother him less about doing the hokey pokey. But nothing happens when I put a pen in his hand and say "oh look what fun, lets make letters!" He says something like, "no, why don't you go have fun making letters. I'm going to make a cage for my pet eagle Birdezeh, look I'm wearing gloves so his talons don't hurt me. I need some meat, do we have any meat?..." So so far hothousing hasn't really worked.

Polly

I recall this feeling the desire to have dd4 read well early, partly because it would just be interesting, but partly because she was doing everything else so early, it just seemed inevitable. But so far she is just about normal in reading for a 4 year old. Lots of sight words, some attempts at sentence reading, etc. Her vocab is crazy big, uses words like mimic instead of copy, 'mock', 'literally', etc.
Convincing the preschool to have her in K was part of the reason too, but in the end other things convinced them that she should at least try, and either way her reading will progress as she sees fit.
Ds10 was pretty normal in his starting reading but after getting the ball rolling did shoot up several grade levels very quickly, so I wonder if dd will do that as well.

"when there's no pedagogical or cognitive-developmental reason"

How much of a reason is there for the standard time frames? I don't remember any of it making much sence. When I talk to people (I was browsing curriculum books on a discount shelf a few weeks ago, and those were VERY nonsensicle about when to teach what -- to the point of "teaching" completely inaccurate information most of the time in an effort, I think, to make it accessible to the age group they immagined) it never makes much sence at all. As far as I can tell, 90% of the "teaching" people's kids get in school is really compliance. Not so much "can you read this?" but "will you read this when I tell you to, the way I tell you to?"

It seems to me that a "pedagogic" reason for teaching something would be something like the "proximal development" stuff, or else some kind of formalized structure for noting a child's interests and attentions. A cognitive-developmental reason would be something like "readers who learned between the ages of X and Y have brains structured more like Z" where Z is desirable.

I don't think there's much of either of those in formal schooling.

Which is not to say I'd try and hot-house reading so a teacher will "get it," though that might count as a "social developmental reason." I have serious doubts about wether it would WORK. When DS (then 19 mos) went to an SLP, despite having to tick off a whole lot of ahead-of-age-range boxes on her form, she declaired him "delayed." She even inserted the modifier "insignificant" apparently to clarify the situation. She just wasn't interested in seeing a kid with a small spoken vocabularly as a successful communicator. Lots of people won't be interested in seeing a young child as a reader. People usually see what they expect to see.

If I wanted a DCP to "Get" my kid better, I'd just talk to them about him candidly. Not sure that would work EITHER, mind you. Actually I have nothing useful to say. But wanted to point out that the standard ages aren't magical as far as I can tell.

-Mich

If you added early reading to that I bet you'd start hearing suggestions he should get tested for autism spectrum disorders.

Do you think there is any chance he needs more help to understand the routine and expectations of the classroom. Some kids, including bright ones, who do not have disorders of any kind, do need more explicit instruction to pick up on this stuff.

That's almost exactly our experience, too. Before (I think!) he could truly read, he used to recite long passages from his favourite books, with or without the book in front of him. My theory is that that memory, combined with an analytical gift that now shows up in maths, made it inevitable that he'd teach himself to read. He had a whole shelf full of Rosetta stones...

For the record, DS now 7 learned to read sometime between 2.5-3 years old (I don't know exactly because he was self-taught, and we didn't recognize it until a few weeks before he turned 3). And even with that knowledge, his preschool didn't get it. It wasn't until they were told he was grade skipped because he was brighter than the average bear that they got it and tried to take credit for it (at my DD's pre-k meeting)!!!!

So, if she does learn to read, they will just blame you for hot-housing, whether you did or not.

I have always found it interesting that parents of normally developing kids are encouraged to provide a literacy-rich and number-rich environment and to make sure that their kids have the basic skills needed to enter schooling, but parents of gifted kids are accused of providing an enriching environment that has overprepared their childrend for schooling. Eventhough our school has seen my kids scores and has subject and grade accelerated them, it is often mentioned, as a way of negating the extreme scores, that we provide an enriching home life to them. All I do is read to my kids and take them fun places, just like everyone is encouraged to do, but it's used against me. So, unfortunately, even when people see what your child can do, people tend to try to explain it away to make the unusual things they are seeing in your child more usual and more in line with their expectations. I think that the only way that you're going to get others to see your daughter more for who she truly is is to share stories and have lots of casual conversations with the teachers so that they get to know both your DD and you (so that they can see that you are not a pushy-parent).

And I agree with what Mich said. Teaching all kids to begin the process of reading in K because they are supposedly at precisely the right age and the right development stage is much more random than watching for the signs in a child to see if they are ready to read. Who says 5 is the perfect age? Clearly your DD is saying that 5 isn't the age for her. So I see nothing wrong with working a little bit of reading guidance into your day. You're clearly introspective enough that you won't push her beyond what she's interested in and ready for. And, how is teaching reading any different then teaching shoe-tying or zippering or toileting or any of those other things that you're expected to teach? You're just trying to give her what she needs.

Couldn't agree more. Maybe it's just something about the American mentality that says acknowledging one person is intellectually gifted is somehow elitist or unfair, and therefore it needs to be explained away by unhealthy or pushy parenting. Strange that it's perfectly acceptable for a kid to be athletically talented, and the parents are not necessarily accused of hothousing the child's athletic gifts when they provide activities to further that talent -- that seems encouraged as long as the child enjoys the activity.

I know that would be true in our case, so I don't have to read the same books, which he memorized, over and over again.

How do you teach a toddler to read?