On my first day at “big school”, i.e “moving from kindergarten” I was in tears when my mum collected me.
Apparently I thought one day was enough to teach me enough to read as well as my big brother (2 years older).
Severe disappointment.
I am now a voracious reader, and will read anything, anything, as long as there are words to read.
Similarly, one of my earliest memories was that a day care worker was surprised that I could read a kiddie version of “The Country Mouse and the City Mouse” (when I was 3 or 4).
It seems I have always known how to read. I don’t remember NOT knowing.
I remember at 3 or 4, reading aloud signs at grocery stores and diners. Momma laughed when I read a sign at a diner, “Coffee, ten cents? That’s too much!” Everyone else there was speechless.
Momma read to me, constantly. And apparently I absorbed words, and solved their construction and meaning.
I was a Boomer Baby. Schools were flooded with kids, and arbitrary cutoff dates were used to qualify when kids could start school. Momma took me to enroll in elementary school, which was conveniently across the street from where we lived. My birthday was December 3rd, and that school district used December 1st as the cutoff. Momma tried to explain to the principal that I could already read, and she got a condescending smile as he told her that everyone thinks his or her child is precocious.
So I waited a year. After I finally started kindergarten, it became obvious to everyone that by golly! That kid could actually read! Apparently, I was led around to show teachers and staff, put something in my hands, and I’d read it out loud.
The principal called my mother, in shock. “Did you know your daughter can read?”
Duh.
I was always, without fail, the biggest, and the oldest in every class.
~VOW
Same. I remember being in a shop and sounding out some words I saw on a T-shirt: “I Fixed Farrah’s Fawcett”. I was embarrassed when grown-up strangers laughed.
I don’t remember the exact moments or the process. I don’t think I was especially precocious or anything, I learned to read probably in the first grade like most other kids at the time. But I took to reading as my preferred entertainment, even over TV (which we got at about the same time I learned to read), I think because it was a solitary activity, and being solitary suited me.
My big breakthrough came when I realized I didn’t have to stick with my age-level reading, which may have happened around the 3rd grade. I remember in 2nd grade I was still reading 2nd-grade-level books. By the eighth grade I was reading A Tale of Two Cities and The Grapes of Wrath. Fortunately for me I was tall for my age and looked older, so this behavior didn’t draw the notice of any librarians.
I recall suddenly being able to read the ingredients on my breakfast cereal box I stared at every morning.
I was reading well before I started school (much to the distress of my kindergarten “teacher”), no memory of my pre-literate period.
There are quite a few books I would have enjoyed had I first read them by my own choice, that were utterly ruined for me by “teachers” forcing various interpretations and demanding dissection of the work to the point of sucking all possible pleasure out of the reading.
I remember a snapshot of the middle of the process, my grandparents had given me Jules Verne’s “Mysterious Island” as a gift and I wanted to read it NOW. But I didn’t quite know all the letters yet.
So the snapshot is my mom preparing food in the kitchen, me with the book in a chair nearby, reading and asking her about any letter I didn’t recognize and how it sounded.
It’s funny how the real world memory overlaps with images of people in a balloon being carried by a storm, the first scene of Mysterious Island.
I don’t think my kindergarten “teacher” ever found out I could read. She started off by grabbing my hand, holding it up, and telling the whole class “Look at this kid holding a pencil like a shovel!” Kindergarten was kind of optional at the time, and after that I mostly didn’t go.
First grade actual teacher found out right away I could read, and had me and a couple of others in the class reading the second or third grade books. The second grade teacher was very ticked off about that and made me read them all over again. They were very boring even the first time.
I don’t remember ever not knowing how to read, though obviously I must have learned sometime; presumably by being read to by my mother, who would sit me next to her and run her finger under the words as she read them. I don’t think it occurred to me not to learn to read any more than it occurred to me not to learn to talk – everybody I knew could read and did so (I was the youngest child, after a nine-year gap.)
My mother told me they found me reading a newspaper when I was about three and a half. I asked her why I was reading a newspaper, something I couldn’t remember doing (other than the comics) before I was an adult? She said it was a story about a horse.
I’ve been an avid reader all my life, and always have at least one book and sometimes more than one that I’m in the middle of; but I have a great deal of trouble making myself read, or at least start reading long enough for it to grab me, any book that I think I’m supposed to read. What I learned in school wasn’t how to read, it was that I probably didn’t want to read anything I was supposed to.
I was two and a half years younger than my sister. My parents would read stories to both of us and were teaching my sister to read when she was in 1st grade. But I knew the books so well from repeatedly hearing them I didn’t need to read them, I knew them. So when my sister got stuck on a word, I’d tell her what it was. This did not go over well with her.
So my mother had me go play in my room. I took another book that I knew and sort of taught myself how to read as I knew the words so I just had to associate the spelling with the word. Then it was a short matter to get to know the words in different contexts. Sounding words out didn’t come until later.
I don’t remember learning how to read. The only memory I have is asking Mom what a particular word in an ad was. The answer was toothpaste, and Mom wasn’t surprised about me asking. I do know I learned to read before 1st grade.
My family were all voracious readers, and there was always books, magazines and newspapers around
I have a memory of holding what seemed gigantic at the time, The Golden Book Encyclopedia and working at relating the words with the pictures for what seemed like hours. I was under 5 years old, but I’m not sure how much younger.
My son, at age 6 or 7, made me regret that he could read when he asked “What’s an adult toystore?”.
We had just driven past what passed for the “red light” district in the suburban PA area near where I grew up. A tiny strip mall had 4 stores, of similar non-family-friendly types of businesses.
I have flat-out lied to each of my kids on one occasion. This was Dweezil’s. I said “You know how grownups sometimes call fancy TVs and steroes their ‘toys’. I guess that’s a store that sells things like that!”.
A few years later, we were driving up US-15 north of Harrisburg, with frequent signs advertising “Gentlemen’s Club”. I was so very, very thankful he did not ask. That time, I’d have told him the truth.
Moon Unit’s “mommy lied” moment (which I have since confessed) was when she was freaking out about cooperating with a necessary, and fairly urgent, dental procedure (a baby tooth had abscessed and needed to be removed). I had them put me in the chair, and pretend to turn on the nitrous. She tried seeing if I could feel pain, and jammed a finger into my leg, HARD, while I acted loopy and said something like “whaaaaa?? did someone touch my leg??”. She was convinced, and let them yank the tooth, and all was well (luckily, she was a happy drunk).
/hijack.
I entered first grade in 1957. Our teacher, Miss McGovern, was about to retire and so she taught us using phonics, not the official New York City school method. It worked. I remember reading Fun with Dick and Jane - Run, Spot, Run! (Who is this Tom character?)
Somewhere near the end of first grade everything clicked, and that summer I was reading “From the Earth to the Moon” by Jules Verne. I’ve regretted never asking my mother how she figured out I could do this. I didn’t think it odd until my kids started reading, and then it was too late.
In second grade I was spotted reading “20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea” and was sent to the principal’s office to read to him. I must have done okay. They pretty much let me read what I wanted to after that.
I have no memory of learning to read; probably in first grade. In those days kindergarten was mainly socialization. But what I do remember was the day I was in second grade that I discovered that comics were much better if you read the balloons. Until then I just looked at the pictures.
Yeah, my Dad was a teacher. He taught me to read with the Sunday comics. By the time I entered Kindergarten, I could read the comics.
I remember. Soon after starting 1st grade I was impatient with the pace of learning I started trying to use the concept of phonics to learn on my own. It didn’t work all that well initially. I still remember thinking of the word ‘house’ starting with ‘h’ and having an ‘s’ in it with a bunch of other pointless letters. It didn’t take long from that point to read words with spellings not far away from their pronunciations, and then after a while figuring out words based on context. It took the longest to work out the funny words that really did contain a lot of superfluous letters like ‘neighbor’.
I was 4. My mom would read to me as much as I wanted when I was little, so I had memorized several books like “Pokey Little Puppy” and “Tiger In The Grass” and many of the Curious George books by then. At the time it was a summer-time activity for all of us kids and Mom to spread a blanket out in the yard and sit on it and read. We each would read our own book to ourselves and the summer I turned 4, I got one of my older brother’s Hardy Boys books and started sounding out and reading to myself.
This resulted in my being forced into reading tutoring in 1st 2nd and 3rd grades because the school wouldn’t accept that I already was reading at that level and decided I had already somehow memorized the “Dick and Jane” and “See Spot Run” readers instead.
I guess it wad just not conceivable in the 70s in Idaho that someone might be a little ahead academically.
Apparently I taught myself to read by age 4. I do vaguely remember my Mother spreading the newspaper out on the floor to read it each day and me sitting beside her asking what some of the words were.
So by the time I started at my (small, country) school at age 5 I was already years ahead of the other kids, and was soon enough given books to read that were intended for advanced readers, 8, 9, 10yr olds etc.
Also a lot of the other kids were dyslexic (though that was not a recognised condition at the time) so I looked way smarter than I really was, and was therefore an immediate target for bullying.