You said it, sister! Mine were both early readers (although apparently about average for this particular group), but what good does it do my sixteen-year-old now that she could read “Chicken Soup With Rice” at age three? My teenagers still don’t always remember to put their dishes in the sink. I should have given them the manuals for the household appliances instead of all that Dr. Seuss.
My mom was a teacher, and she taught me to read when I was three. When I entered first grade, I was reading at a fourth grade level; in fourth grade, I was reading at a seventh grade level. In both cases, I actually left my classroom and went to the upper grade for reading class.
I could read words and recognize letters at 3 or so, and was reading at a Kindergarten + level at age 4. However, I was an advanced reader (reading at a post-HS level by 6th grade), so I might be on the early side of the data points, as would probably the majority of the people here. The members of the SDMB tend to be in the higher levels of education and intelligence.
I think I was about 4. I remember my parents asking me to read traffic signs before we passed them in our car.
I was very young, less than 3 when my father started reading to me. He would read the words and point them out, and explain them if he needed to. According to my parents, within six months I was reading the morning newpaper to him. By the time I entered elementary school, I was reading at about 5 grade levels ahead of just about everyone else.
When I was a freshman in high school, I was tested on a machine that measured speed and comprehension. The teacher was so impressed by the results that he and I played with the machine and kept cranking it up. The net result was that my “average” reading speed, where I felt the most comfortable, was about 8000 wpm with 90% comprehension. When we cranked it up, I could get up near 20000 wpm with about 60% comprehension, but if I read the passage twice at the same speed, the comprehension went up to 90%.
Served me well in college at those time when I had to cram for tests. 
The downside (if one can call it that) is that I read voraciously. I usually have 2-5 books going at a time, and I keep my books. I now have a library of nearly 1000 books, and I read them all at least once a year. Even though I know the plots, it’s still fun to reread them because there’s always some nuance that I missed the last time.
That may be.
I think (not just picking on you, though to be honest I just do not see how a child who cannot speak a language can read it) we’re conditioned these days to exagerrate our kids’ early reading capabilities. I really don’t think there’s this many people who read at 2 or 3, or what is perhaps happening is that parents are defining “reading” as being “he seems interested in the words” (as Scuba’s parents essentially described it) or a kid just knowing his alphabet and such. In a similar thread on this subject a Doper claimed to be reading at a “College level” at age 3 or 4, or some such thing; I asked about that, and his parents were defining it was being able to recognize some of the words in a college-level text, which obviously is not really that big a deal.
I do this too. My parents did it. My parents are much fond of repeating the story about how I could count to ten when I was a year old, which is the purest horeshit, really; I could repeat the words, which I’d heard on Sesame Street, but I don’t for an instant think I was actually capable of counting. My wife likes to say our 5-month-old daughter “slept through the night” when she woke up at 2 AM and again at 4:30.
Sorry, I’m not busting on anyone’s stories. It’s just that this all gives the impression that kids are supposed to be reading at two or three. Almost NO children can genuinely read, in the sense of reading and comprehending sentences, at the age of two, and few can do it at three. It’s very, very rare.
Four – I recall already being able to read fluently when I entered KG at 5. I did have to learn to write there, though.
My grandfather, a man with a 4th-grade education, took his time to teach me the letters and numbers while I was in his care. He would read out loud to me the church bulletin and the paper and have me follow along, and it was with him more than with anyone else that I drew in the thirst for what’s on the printed page, the need to know what is is that’s being written/talked about.
Yet, no pressure or harrying to meet some sort of milestone benchmark – just show the kid the letters and the words, and let him pick it up. The more recent tendency to have the child on some sort of academic fast track by the time s/he’s 3 leaves me cold…