My DD who turned four last month has been able to read words since she was two. I know she can read because she reads emails over my shoulder and when on rare occassion when she goes against her natural impulse to do the opposite of what is asked of her, she has read a word or sentence here and there, it is clear she is reading and sounding out novel words etc, but she has always been reluctant to read to me (and I don't push it and only ask once in awhile in a gentle way) and has never read a book to me besides Bob books when she was two going on three and then only a few times. Well the other day she picked up a book with longer paragraphs and words like investigate and resumed and read it fluently to me cover to cover. I had no idea she was that fluent and am shocked she hid it so long. Anyone else have this experience?

I think it's pretty common. DS didn't hide it quite to that extent, but we were still surprised when we found out just how much he could read at that age. His preschool teachers didn't know he could read at all until we told them.

If you want to know how much they can read, a sneaky way might be to let them read to a pet and then eavesdrop on them. DS used to like to disappear into the basement with our dog and read to her. Our local library has read-to-a-dog programs for reluctant readers, but DS did that on his own even though he was not remotely a reluctant reader.

TT, was it the first time she'd seen the book, or was she familiar with it? I just ask because when DD was learning to read, she'd muddle through a complex book over & over, figure out all of the words, etc., before she could read it fluently. Then if you heard her read it, she sounded very fluent indeed, even though it had taken a lot of work to get there. I wonder if your DD might be doing the same thing (but in her head) and might not want to read aloud until she's got a book all figured out.

At 2 my DS had been "reading" his own books aloud for a while, but I'd assumed it was almost entirely memory. (He could recite long chunks of his favourite books with or without the book in front of him, so my assumption wasn't unreasonable; with hindsight, I think it was the fact that he had memorised so much that let him "crack the code".) I had known he could read CVC words a bit and that he'd had a phase of being obsessed with spelling, but I didn't realise he'd put it all together until he picked up a book he'd never seen before (at the open day of a school we were visiting!) and read it aloud all through. He hadn't hidden anything, but I'd made wrong assumptions about what it meant.

Hee hee! This reminds me of a description I read of pregnant cats. "The first sign that she is ready to give birth may be kittens in your sock drawer."

TwinkleToes, my DD who is 4 is exactly the same way. She reads everything and will pop out with large words she reads on TV, billboards, in stores, over my shoulder on the computer etc. but will not read out loud to me. If I try to bribe her by reading every other page to her she mumbles her pages. I know she knows all of the words so I don't get it. She will read them to herself just not out loud. Oh well one day I guess. I just ordered her the books by Daisy Meadows that were suggested on this site and pulled out some Junie B. Jones books we'll see how it goes.

My son did the same thing, still does actually. I think for his case it's tied to perfectionism. He doesn't do it until he feels he's good at it. He's actually just now, at 6.5, starting to read aloud and read chapter books, both of which he's been able to do for a couple years but if he didn't know one word he felt he wasn't able to read it. What he does do is read signs and other things out loud, he doesn't think of it the same way.

Try not to sweat it, she will when she's ready and I bet you see her start doing it when she's distracted.

Wow! The Junie phase is so past us. I had such a difficult time reading the Junie books. I knew what I expected them to say and would "misread" them.

My son was underground with his reading until around age 3.5ish. I had hints, as he would occaisionally accidentally read something and totally deny it. What changed at 3.5 was that I actually sat him down and tried to coax him a little. It turned out he struggled with some words that didn't follow his nice neat package of rules. He still gets annoyed by rule-breaking, and still backs away from things he thinks might possibly be something he doesn't 'get' right away. I decided to change the bed-time story rule for a few months and I asked both boys (not just him) to read an easy book to me before I read to them. I made sure it was easy and brief, and it didn't matter that he memorized the books usually after a first reading, but it helped get him past that little hurdle and he hasn't looked back since.

My daughter doesn't seem to share that hesitation, and I look forward to seeing where her personality will lead.

she had taken that book to bed the night before, but I don't think it is about figuring out the words, they were all ones she could handle but her idea that "mommies read to children. Children do not read to mommies." The reason she read to me was because she was playing mommy. I suggested we do it again, and she said no. I try not to push, but I really love when she reads to me and am envious of other parents whose children want to read to them. She has this desire to do exactly what you do not want her to do and strongly rebels against requests and will only do what she wants to do when she wants to do. Clearly she can read and read advanced vocabulary, and doesn't "need" to read yet so I will just let her do it on her own as I always have, but hope she decides to share with me again. I think it would help her to see another child reading. At preschool none of the kids read and it may be the issue of not wanting to be too different.

Just a thought - there is a set of books called "You read to me and I'll read to you" (or something like that) with alternating paragraphs for parents and children. If the issue is that the role that Mommy is the reader and not the child, then these might be a fun way to get past it.

... I did a quick search:
http://www.amazon.com/You-Read-Me-Ill-Together/dp/0316363502

Maybe that's your problem. Have you tried reverse psychology?

She will have in her mind what she'd like to do. And when you suggest/ask the opposite, her mind "may" wonder ... "but what about this other way or other thing"

She will need time to transition. Normal kids need time to transition. Gifted kids depending on how "deeply" they are attached to the current activity will need some time to transition to another activity or thought/idea, etc. Not saying this is necessarily the case with your child per se, but lots of kids seem to need this. Actually normal kids really do need transition time ... all the way to upper primary years, I think. Ok, I admit it -- I need transition time.

We loved the "you read to me, I read to you" series. My little one wouldn't read on her own because then wouldn't mommy stop reading at bed time? So, our situation was quite different.

My son was like that. He read for me when he was 2 1/2 but wouldn't do it in front of his dad. When he was about 3 1/2, his dad caught him one day reading over my shoulder something on the computer screen. I asked my son how he knew what I had just read silently and my husband said he saw him read it. His older son had also taught himself to read.

At 4, in his musical theater class, he was silently reading the script for "Babes in Arms" and the boy who was reading lines next to him lost his place so my son told him the next couple of words. The boy later asked him where he went to school and what grade he was in. My son had never even been to preschool and didn't know what to say. When he was asked this question by someone else at a grocery store after they saw him reading out loud, he told them he went to funschool.com but he still didn't know what to tell people when they asked what grade he was in. This has always been a problem. He finally started telling people if he were in public school he would be in __th grade (whatever grade his age mates were in).

I guess he got tired of me asking him to read in front of adult relatives and once when I asked him to read a sign out loud for his grandparents he loudly said, "Read? I'm too young to read!" and went back to what he was doing so I quit asking him. He didn't seem to mind reading for other kids for some reason and he enjoyed letting them spell out words for him because he could usually identify the words, especially science related words because his favorite book at the time was a children's science encyclopedia. He did enjoy the attention he got from other kids for this. Those years before he was old enough to start school, before we knew the advanced reading would be seen as a problem by our public school teachers, were really fun.