I would say that the most important thing is not to teach them to read, but to teach them to love reading. The rest will follow from there. The easiest way to do this is to read to them. Read for many hours a day, with the kid in your lap so you can both see the book. Sooner or later, they’ll realize that they can read faster than you can read aloud.
Can a teacher weigh in an opinion?
As anyone who reads one my responses to this kind of question knows, I teach kindergarten in an urban school district. Typically I have entering kindergarten students who can often do little more than recognize and write their own names, and maybe recite/recognize a smattering of the alphabet and do some one to one counting correspondence. Some of my students have much more skill than this. Some have much less.
The better prepared you are by your parents to read, write, count, do arithmetic, have an interest in science, social studies and money and manage your own things (clothes and school supplies) the better off you’ll be (and do) in school. Exapno Mapcase’s mother-in-law has it exactly right mentioning the importance of children developing social skills early; acsenray makes an equally good point about children learning to manage their own boredom without being disruptive. It may be reflective of my own school experiences, but I’m convinced most teachers will bend over backwards to accommodate a child who learns well with enrichment activities – even if that child has to be a little paitient waiting for the teacher to get done helping the “slower” students in the class first.
Unlike Gravity – reading, writing and drawing at a young age kept me from being bored in school. Whenever I got done with assignments early, I grabbed a book and read, or a pad and paper and doodled away. Worked out pretty well… at least until I ended up at a neighborhood vocational high school…
I learned to read before I started kindergarten.
Today I live in a homeless shelter.
Coincidence, or psychic phenomenon? 
I was bored stiff all through school. That wasn’t all, though. On a daily basis, I was savagely beaten by children of all races and creeds, and mocked mercilessly. This, of course, resulted in a sense of self-confidence that was notable by its absence. These daily beatings and attacks on my self-esteem were my own fault, I learned. According to my mother, I was being persecuted by my peers for the following reason: “They’re jealous because you’re so smart!” She truly believed that. So, much like lissener, my poor school performance was seen as willful and for that I was constantly berated at home.
Of course, good grades were important to my parents because they would “help me get into college.” That turned out to be a moot point when it came time to start thinking about college, and I discovered that the aforementioned parents had made no financial preparations for sending me to college. The $500 music scholarship I earned for my mad bassoon skills didn’t go very far, so my time at Washington State University was limited to a single semester.
Shortly thereafter, I was duped into enrolling in a local “business school”. I excelled in that school’s one-year accounting program, making the Dean’s List several times and graduating with honors. Alas, it turned out that the diploma I earned was best suited to wrapping fish, and wouldn’t even get me a job as an assistant manager at Skipper’s Seafood & Chowder House. Despondent, I turned to drink. I neglected my financial obligations, particularly my student loans, as I found repaying them to be a distasteful proposition (beer tasted much better). My creditors, naturally, were more eager to take my money than I was to give it to them, and to my detriment, they had the courts on their side. They took my money by force of law, and I couldn’t pay my rent, which is how I ended up living in a homeless shelter.
If only I had learned to “Just say no!” I may have had the knowledge and the means to run far and fast from that first book. Unfortunately, I cracked my first book in 1970, many years before Mrs. Reagan stepped in. For me it was too little, too late. I was already hooked, and the downward spriral had already begun. But if my story can keep just one child from making the mistakes I made, it will have all been worth it.
If there is a quality Montessori school in your area you may want to check it out. They let children proceed at their own pace. Classes are grouped 1-3rd “grade” and 4-6th “grade”. Our son had Montessori pre-school where he was reading at 4, then went to public Kindergarden. We told the teacher he was reading and she promised to give him extra work at his level. Then at the mid-year parent/teacher conference she told us “you know what, your child is reading!!”. We pulled him out and sent him back to Montessori through junior high. He got into CMU (proud dad) and I think Montessori was really good for him.
On the other hand, I think that children are all unique and that what works for one may not work for another.
My children started reading fluently at the ages of 4 and 3 and they’re excellent students. They **love ** school (they’re the kids that insist that they are NOT sick, the thermometer MUST be wrong, and why am I SO mean as to keep them home for a day?), and I strongly believe that being able to focus on learning the concepts, without being distracted by having to learn to read, has given them a definite edge. They’re also in an excellent (public) school system, that offers “integrated day” classes - K and 1 function as one grade (for 2 years), and likewise for 2nd - 3rd, and 4th - 5th. This gives them the ability to be in a less restrictive learning environment - in 2nd grade, if their abilities indicate it, they can work on 3rd grade level curriculum. The entire program is more openly structured, while still meeting all of the state’s requirements (not that that’s a challenge).
I was also reading very early on, and as far as I can tell, it has only served as an advantage - but my academic performance wouldn’t reflect that. Sure, I was bored in school - but not because I’d learned things earlier than everyone else. Even if someone had waited until I was the “normal” age to teach me those things, I am certain that I just would have picked it up “faster” than everyone else anyway, and would have been bored anyway. The key difference, I think, is the difference in teaching approaches - when I was in school, it was definitely true that the class could only move as fast as its slowest student. For my kids, fortunately, if they get bored, an excellent teacher in an outstanding school comes up with new ways to motivate them.
Never discourage your kids from learning all that they can, when they can. If they still lack challenge and motivation, you can certainly come up with ways to keep them properly stimulated.
A child who mostly reads will not develop speaking skills. Curiously, that child may not learn spelling, either. It’s a different sort of skill.
That doesn’t seem an insurmoutable problem. If you see your child had a particular problem, figure a way to fix it. I don’t agree with purposfully holding a kid back.
I learned to read around 18 months. I was reading Beverly Cleary (Ralph S. Mouse, Ramona, etc) at 3 or 4. I tried Wilder, but couldn’t get into it.
The school psychologist wanted to put me in the second grade at four. My parents said no. I’m glad they did. It’s hard enough being a smart kid, but being a smart kid who’s three or four years younger than everyone else is harder. Social skills are just as important as reading or math. (I can’t imagine being in college… graduating before I could drink) That leaves you incredibly isolated.
I see no problem with reading early… I always got my homework done before school was out and had time to ride my bike or take things apart when I was at home.
Kids have to want to learn to read. My brother (four years older) was learning to read and I guess I learned at the same time. He’s slightly dyslexic and had a speech impediment so his pronuciations were off and his grasp of phonics wasn’t the best. (Now he’s a writer. Who knew?) He’s still terrible at spelling and pronuncing new words. I’m a great speller and I can sound pretty much anything out.
I didn’t speak (unless forced) until I was almost four. I remember clearly not wanting to speak until I could do it perfectly. That doesn’t have anything to do with reading, I suppose… just my perfectionism streak.
I was reading before I was three, and I could definitely write before I got to kindergarten. I went to a progressive (read: all the teachers were hippies) private school up through 6th grade where they tried not to let me get too bored. I’ve grown up being told that I would have hated public school because I would be so far ahead of the other kids. However, I can’t say for sure that that would actually have happened. (I’ve gone to public school since 7th grade and done just fine, but everyone could read by then.) My sister’s in second grade at a public school, and she’s doing fine, but she’s more on pace with “normal” kids her age.
As for how I turned out, I’m in the top 10 of my class (high school senior) and taking all AP/honors courses. I do have problems with reading comprehension (basically, I read something and promptly forget it), but I don’t know if that’s directly related to learning to read at an early age.
Just wanted to thank everyone for their responses in this thread. My four-year-old son will be starting kindergarden this fall (he’s currently in preschool), and he can already read and write to a degree (no Laura Ingels, though). Now I’ll be sure to keep an eye on him when he starts school, to see if he’s getting bored in class, and ask the administrators about what policies they have for students who are ahead/behind in their class.
My older sister was reading and writing at 4 years old, while I didn’t start reading till I was well into my 7th year. I remember her reading Judy Blume novels in kindergarten, while I didn’t even know which letter was which at the same age. She always was in the advanted classes in elementry school while I struggled in the regular class. Years later I did more than a hundred points better then her on the verbal portion of the SAT. I finally got to be the smart one 
for once. Goes to show a lot can happen between kindergarten and graduation. Because children develope so quickly and differently, they can pull ahead and fall behind just as fast.
I went to a Waldorf school, when I about was…six, I think?
It was one of the most freaking boring times of my life. And I’ve worked retail.
I was already reading by the time I was five. The Kindergarden teacher wouldn’t believe it. (Of course…she was a flake, too.)
In Waldorf, I basically remember croucheting, beeswax modeling, and (re)learning the the letters of the alphabet. One letter a day.
Then there were all the rowdy kids in class who took up the teachers’ time.
To make a long story short, my parents pulled me out of Waldorf after a few months, after seeing how…“dissatisfied” I was, there. I started homeschooling after that.
The next year, 1990, I read “The Hunt for Red October” for the first time. I’d been reading “Young Adult” novels for some time before that.
So, anyway, maybe all Waldorf schools aren’t so bad. Maybe it was just the one I was in, and the grade level I was in, etc. I’m just tellin’ you what I experienced.
Ranchoth
(Of course, I also suck at math, now. But that might just be a personal failing. 
)
I can tell you that in a decent school system this is completely false. First of all, elementary schools almost always split classes into groups of comparable ability. While one group of first graders is working on their ABCs, another is reading a simple novel, and gradations in between.
As for turning out academically better, it couldn’t hurt!
As I see it, this puts the onus on the school rather than on the student and his family. Did your parents try calling the school board and seeing what was available? Mine did and found that there was a class offered on the weekend in more advanced material and that I’d be allowed to use the time I’d normally have been in math class to do the homework assigned on the weekend. There weren’t enough students in any one school to justify this class, but across the county there were plenty.
Teachers aren’t there to entertain the children. If your children are bored, contact the school and see what can be worked out. Take an active role in your children’s education instead of expecting the school system to do every little thing for you.
I read fluently for years before I started school. So did both my daughters. Nobody “taught” us. But it was an established activity in our family that children should be read stories, both at bedtime and other times. In my early childhood, there was no t.v. (I remember when I was younger than five and the first t.v. set in the neighborhood was obtained by someone down the street.) After a while I must have started to look at the book my mother was reading from, and soon began to follow the words, and voila! In fact, I do not remember NOT being able to read. Pretty much the same thing happened with my kids, although t.v. did exist by then.
Kindergarten was fine. First grade was awful. I was terribly bored. My mom tried keeping me home, hoping the others would “catch up,” but of course when I was home, what I mostly did was read. I read the dictionary, my father’s astronomy books, everything I could get my hands on. The less I went to school, the more I learned. Finally in January I was put into second grade. I found out much later that the school had given my parents crap about having taught me to read, on the theory that only a certified teacher could “do it right.” The only remedy the school had at that time was skipping a grade. Unfortunately, I missed the end of 1st and beginning of 2nd grade where basic arithmetic was taught, and it has taken me a long time to make up for that.
When my daughters went to school, I already knew, since I was on my local school board, that children arriving in first grade were accepted at whatever level they arrived with, be that not knowing what a book was, or reading fluently. They also had a rudimentary program for the gifted.
Local schools SHOULD be able to deal with students with special needs, whether those special needs cause them to be below or above the glorious average. Obviously, this doesn’t happen often enough. In the private religious schools in my town, for example, it doesn’t happen at all; everyone is expected to progress in lock-step. Really needy children are provided with remedial help by public school teachers who are brought in to do so.
Obviously, it is up to both family and school to do right by the children. Parents, IMHO, should not push very young children to read, but should read to them and should be seen to value literacy. In the best of all possible worlds, all parents would have the time and the means to find a good school, and to work with the school to provide the appropriate environment for the children. Teachers would also have small class sizes, to let them meet those needs. Equally obviously, the world we live in is not the best of all possible.
Not only could my youngest daughter not read when she started kindergarten, she couldn’t even write her name. Certainly I tried, but as soon as she figured out that the game we were playing had anything to do with writing, she would say she didn’t want to play that game anymore.
She is an adult and the mother of a son now. I noticed that when her son was small she did read to him, but she was more likely to tell him stories. A favorite way of hers to tell stories was to have her son choose three words and she would weave a story around them.
She now writes and illustrates children’s books.
Just to hijack. My first impression of the school was “WTF?” But my wife loved it and she always gets her way. I’ve gotten used to it now and wouldn’t dream of putting my kiddies in public school. But the whole Waldorf concept is so “out there” I can see how it could turn into a complete train wreck if not administered properly. I’m as guilty of sterotyping public schools based on my own horrible experiences as others are of judging all Waldorfs based on a couple flakes. Just life I guess.
Math ain’t important, that’s what calculators, computers and mathematicians are for. If you can play well with others, well, then you’re management material and can hire math-heads to crunch your numbers for you.
This is second-hand from my mother. I certainly don’t remember it.
They wanted to teach me to read when I was in pre-k. When whoever was supposed to teach me told me that, I retorted “I’m only four years old! I don’t have to read yet!”
They told my mom and she agreed. So I learned the next year, and was reading within a few months.
I suppose the moral is that each kid should go at their own pace.
I went to shit southern schools. There was nothing. The gifted class was one hour a week. The only concession they were willing to make was to bump me ahead, and my mother didn’t want a seven year old with thirteen year olds.
Another anecdote - my parents flashcarded me. Blue sharpie on 5x7 index cards. But I wanted to read, too. (Which came first, I don’t know). I was put in kindergarten at 4. I’d go to school, have reading with the 3rd graders, have lunch with the first graders, and then be on time for afternoon kindergarten with the rest of the kindergarteners. Yes, there were problems with being bored in class, but the competent teachers (which, luckily, were most of them - just a few, highly notable exceptions) were ok with that, and let me just read more. I loved reading, so I was happy and I got the vocabulary, spelling, and grammar indirectly from the extra reading - so they were happy, too. The incompetent teachers couldn’t handle it, and so they would either assign me more busy work (the reward for finishing faster, more stuff you can do in your sleep! So why bother in the first place.) or get frustrated with me.
Did the other kids catch up? How can you tell? And how can you tell how much of that is due to reading early v. all the other factors that may or may not have gone into it.
In my post above, I should have mentioned my wife is an Early Childhood Educator, and my family has been an advocate for quality education for 40 years.
In general, there will always be a time when some percent of children will find themselves ahead of the class on some topic or another. And yes, of course they’ll be bored to tears. Sometimes, it simply cannot be helped. Still, this would never discourage me from exposing my child to as many things as possible to expand his/her horizons. - Jinx