About the only thing - other than their birthdays and my son’s arrival - I can pin point with any accuracy is that they both potty trained at 3 1/2. And even then its “3 1/2” - I can’t get much closer than within a few months. And walking - 13 months and 14 months.
There was a summer where my daughter was impressing the neighbor mom by saying her ABCs ‘young’…was she two or three or four…? I’d guess three. (I do remember she’d forget L for a long time.) I remember going to a birthday party when my son was four and another Mom saying he was really independent for his age.
My kids are asking “Mom, what was my first word…” “Ummm, I don’t know.” “When did I loose my first tooth” - “Ummm, you were both still in daycare…”
Those things I thought I’d remember vividly are lost in the blur of four years without enough sleep.
Maybe I’m just a bad mom. But I’m doing better than my mother, who can usually get my birthday with laser target accuracy within six weeks.
Oh, yeah, I don’t keep track of any of that stuff. My oldest son’s baby book has exactly two (2) entries in it, and I don’t even have baby books for the other two. The only reason I remember that my youngest knew his letters at age 24 mos. is that 1) he’s only 30 months now, and 2) the pediatrician made such a fuss over it that I thought she was going to tell me he was autistic. I realize that my prior post probably came off as some kind of mommy bragging, but seriously, the kid barely talks except to read the letters on signs.
Wait, why am I apologizing for talking about my kid’s developmental milestones? Do you see what the Internet does to people? Do you?!?! I’m going to go have a Diet Coke and settle down.
I remember reading at a young age. I could read unfamiliar words by the time I was 3, and I have memories of reading when I was 2. In fact, I remember the first word I ever read, on a tall signpost as I lay in my mother’s arms in the front seat of the truck. I remember seeing the word, recognizing the letters, and knowing what it sounded like and what it meant. The word was…EXXON. heh.
But the story my folks love to tell about me reading is from when we still lived in White Rock (we moved away from there before I turned 3), and they came home from whatever they’d been doing that evening. The babysitter told them, “Did you know he can read?” They laughed it off and said no, he’s just memorized his books from when we read to him and recites them back. “No, really,” the babysitter said, “he was reading to me from today’s National Geographic.” So they tested me out, and sure enough, I could read stuff I hadn’t seen before. So anyway, there’s my personal brag.
Now, on to my own daughter. She’s 2 1/2, but she’s showing signs of early reading. She’s been singing the alphabet over a year now, which really only means she knows the song, but lately she’s started recognizing letters on the page. Very often, when we’re on the computer, she’ll say, “I wanna do letters!” and we open up a blank Word document, put on caps lock and bump the size up to 72, and let her type. She’ll say, “I wanna do ‘Daddy’!” and I’ll say, “Okay, what’s first?” “D!” “Where is it?” And she types it. She can find all the letters for Daddy, Mommy, and her own name. Finding the ‘Y’ on her own surprised me the first time, but she surprises me a lot. Anyway, there you have it, early reading readiness before age 3.
I know my parents taught me to pick out words when I was very young. We were zoo members, and got a zoo newsletter, and my mom would give me a highlighter and the newsletter and tell me to highlight every place I saw the word “zoo”. She tells me that when I was two, we passed a sign for the zoo, I saw it, and said “zoo!”
But that was just one word. I can promise you I couldn’t really read at 2. I know I could read when I hit kindergarten, but I remember having to occasionally ask my dad what what certain words were until at least first or second grade.
In Bulgaria, they don’t teach kids to read until they’re seven, which strikes me as ungodly late (and I wondered if this is part of the cause of the terrible education system there), but when I did some research on this, I discovered that they do the same thing in the Scandinavian countries, which, by all accounts, have a very good educational system.
My little sister wasn’t reading on her own until she was six, but still managed to grow up to be a total bookwork.
[slight hijack]
Mother told me that when I was little she’d have me stand on the back seat when she was driving so I could read the street signs for her. [Her distance eyesight was bad.] I don’t remember this at all but she swears it’s true.
[/slight hijack]
Quotable moments help, “Zoe! Get off the computer! It’s time to change your diaper!” She was picking out words (eggs, on the wall at Target) at age 3, and her kindergarten teacher recently told me she tests at the 2nd grade reading level.
Tis no guarantee for life, however; plenty of miserable failures and misanthropes were excellent readers.
In Holland in the regular schools they start in Groep 3, which is first grade, and by Christmas the overwhelming majority of the class is reading. There is no social emphasis on early reading, socially or academically. Parents do not consider it to be a part of their job to teach their kids their letters or numbers or what have you – I recall comforting one of the recently moved expats from Holland in the Dutch Club when we lived in Atlanta who had just discovered that in the US a parent who admits that she did not even try to teach her kid his letters and numbers is considered to be at best a slacker.
They don’t forbid it or anything, and some no doubt do, but there is a complete absence of social expectation of such a thing.
Nevertheless, considering outcomes at the end of high school I think the Dutch kids do very well considering their early deprivation.
Because my kids have an American mother, they nevertheless read early. For one of them it was a bit of a problem because I of course read to them in English and this caused certain issues with learning to read vowel sounds and also screwed up their spelling for a while. But it worked out, now they are 10 and nearly 8 and now neither can spell worth a damn in English. I got an email from Eldest not so long ago, it said “ij love you sow maht” which is a pretty good dutch-phonics approximation of what he wanted to say. (The problem is not the differences so much as the similarities: Dutch has a "ch"sound but it is pronounced as a soft g for example.)
I suspect that many parents who say their children could read at 2 or 3 are really describing emergent literacy like you displayed at that age. I have a friend whose daughter could, at age 3, sound out and understand simple words she’d never seen before. I saw her do this myself. She was also good at memorizing her favorite storybooks, but she could not pick up and read a new book of the “fat cat sat on a mat” variety on her own.
*In Waldorf schools reading and writing isn’t really introduced until age 7, with the earlier years focusing on storytelling and reciting poetry and songs. While many experts feel it’s better to have kids working on reading by about age 6, there doesn’t appear to be any real benefit to getting kids reading at the “conventional literacy” level any younger than that. This isn’t to say that children who are ready to read at an early age should be discouraged from doing so, but that kids who can read “the fat cat sat on the mat” at age 4 don’t seem to have any long-term advantage over the kids who first manage to do this at age 6. Kids who enjoy reading and are exposed to a variety of reading material do have an advantage because they’re getting a lot of practice and are working hard to become better readers for their own sake, but it isn’t necessary for a child to be an early reader in order to be an avid reader.
That’s how I learned to read. My mom read me the same book (about King Arthur, as it happens) until I memorized it. Following her finger along the sentences created the association between the words and the sounds. Then I recognized the same words in other books, of which we had many (God bless my parents!).
I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but it was before kindergarten. Probably four or five.
There is a passage in To Kill A Mockingbird that sort of sums it up -
Children of average intelligence are certainly capable of learning their alphabet, and starting with writing and reading, at 2 and 3. In Montessori programs, kids are beginning to read, and writing proficiently, by age 4. Indeed this is considered the ideal age for learning these things, when the brain’s language centers are still forming. After age 5, it’s much harder for kids to retain such information.
It all depends on how and what they are taught.
Very bright kids, of course, usually pick up on it earlier and often without much assistance.
Around here, all the kids I know are in traditional schooling (Catholic or public) and I don’t know any that learned to read at all before age 5. There’s no effort by any parents I know to encourage reading and writing in young kids, and few opportunities for the bright ones to pick up on it on their own (you need some materials and guidance at least, unless you’re super-smart).
Both my kids started to learn in kindergarten (age 5) and one really struggled. She had lots of remedial tutoring and around age 7 it seemed to click for her, and she began to to be able to read unfamiliar sentences. She’s not a passionate reader now, but she is much better, and reads slightly above grade level. Of course we were worried when she was struggling, but now it doesn’t seem like the delay is having any lasting effects.
In traditional Montessori, kids are not taught the alphabet as most people understand it – it is not uncommon to encounter young kids in Montessori who do not know the “names” of the letters. Children are taught the sounds of the alphabet in association with the symbol instead. This is to avoid confusing the letter name with the letter sound.
In a traditional program, the letter sounds are not taught in alphabetical order. Instead they begin with writing, not reading, (which is why they can write proficiently very early) which itself begins really with drawing. Early writers are drawing, not writing. They teach groupings of letters, in English starting with most common consonants mamking sounds very different from one another and which also look different from one another with one vowel sound incorporated into each group.
This way the children learn the sounds independently from similar sounds or similarly shaped letters (letters like b and d are presented in different groups, as are p and q, as are the short vowel sounds i and e). Using the Method, 3 and 4 are considered to be good ages to begin with concrete presentation of sound/symbol, but I have never seen anything suggesting that it is harder for kids to retain any kind of information after age 5. Quite the opposite. It is harder to learn by using sandpaper letters after age 5 but that is because most kids don’t need the sandpaper letters by that time and are learning in other ways.
My kid is almost 4 and we read beginner books together every night. He knows his letters, and very clearly understands the association of letters and words to making a story, but he still generally guesses at the words as much as reads them.
He’s quite fascinated by letters. One of the things he likes to do is to take letters and put them in a random order, then ask me to read them to him.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… That reminds me of two things. One time at camp as a teen, I was reading the newspapers instead of doing paper mache.
Also, my parents found that punishing me by sending me to my room (as a little kid) didn’t work since I’d just flop on the bed and read books.
She was picking out words (eggs, on the wall at Target) at age 3, and her kindergarten teacher recently told me she tests at the 2nd grade reading level.