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Anyone have this? My 3 year old just starts reading labels on cans the other day. WTH? I quizzed him and he knows a bunch of colors, some numbers, words like tomato, bunny, car, cat, dog, his name, ice cream, etc etc. About 20 words maybe? I have never taught him this. He does not watch that much tv. No idea how he can do this but its kind of cool hahha

I could read before I went to school, pretty much anything. I don't know how I did it, nobody taught me. Nobody read to me. I continued to read way beyond my age level. (I read the whole Dune Series when I was like 8) Prepare to have a child that's horribly bored in school. :(

I look forward to reading responses on this thread. I taught myself to read before I started to school. I don't recall never not knowing how to read. My Mom didn't teach me. I do recall reading the back of cereal boxes way before I started to school, shocking my Mom. In first grade I was bored with what we were reading and was always looking for something else to read. I am still an avid reader and that is what I do with any spare time I have. Even with a heavy work load, I take time to read.

Both of my kids could read before school my oldest more so than my youngest. Now they both went to preschool, and my boy had ST 2 days a week from age 3 on up. There was a lot of exposure to early reading material at home at through that, but he was a great reader early on. Thank god because his ADHD would have had him in the principles office daily, so when he was done w/ class work he ready.

<Raises hand>

I never knew there was a name for it. Like several others said, I don't ever remember not reading, and I don't read like most other people do. I don't process a word, I process blocks of information. I'm a very fast tests gamer because it takes a fraction of the time to read the questions.

I will second the suggestion to get ready for a kid who is bored. Get him involved in enrichment activities. One of my friends actually got an IEP for her son because he was SO far into the stratosphere IQ wise.

From personal experience it is much better to remain with same age peers and enhanced learning opportunities than to skip a grade or grades. That sucked. Zero stars. Do not recommend.

Like others said, I don’t remember ever not reading, and I read like HFSSC describes. I think I recall my mom telling me about how when I read a store sign they didn’t believe me, thought it was just that I knew the names of places I recognized, except then I kept reading signs in areas I hadn’t been to before. I remember being roughly kindergarten age and reading my dad’s newspaper upside-down across the table from him. I read everything, all the time – cereal boxes while eating, shampoo bottles while sitting in the tub, etc. I still read constantly – books, web pages, everything in front of me.

Also as others said, I was mostly bored in school. I went to public school for K and 1, and within a couple months in K, they had me spending most of the day in 1st for reading/spelling. (Even missed the mid-day K bus home once because class ran late!) When they did the same in 1st grade, bumping me up to 2nd for part of the day, they started talking about skipping me. My parents refused to skip me and pulled me after 1st and I started 2nd grade in private school. I was still bored. Thankfully, teachers would let me read in class, and dad had to resort to bribing me for my grades so that I’d bother with doing the work. In 2nd and 3rd grades, we had workbooks for spelling. Both years I took the book home and did the whole book over a weekend so I wouldn’t have to bother with it in school. They wouldn’t let me do that again after that, giving us pages at a time. Mom had to limit me to something like a dozen books from the library every other week. I don’t remember ever struggling with anything in school, except World History (I hated memorizing dates and the teacher was so flipping boring) and Algebra 2/Trigonometry (teacher was terrible at explaining – we had an after school study group to figure it out ourselves). And a semester of Russian language in college was brutal. I’m thankful that they didn’t skip me, because that wouldn’t have solved the problem and only would’ve put me in an awkward place without age-peers.

The biggest issue was that since almost nothing I encountered in school was difficult, I hardly had to work for any of it. I wish my parents had found resources for things for me outside of school, because the school environment set me up to be an incredibly lazy procrastinator (also possibly a touch of inattentive ADD) - even my last minute stuff got As. Instead of learning how to study, I learned to game the system. So now, I often struggle with learning new things that *don’t* come incredibly easy (instruments or programming, for ex.) because I have to work really hard to just focus on studying. So I agree with the others, be prepared for him to be bored with school - let him read everything, but also start on stuff he might not get early/well in school – music, languages, technology, sports, etc.

Good luck!

[This message edited by ChewedMeUp at 8:54 AM, February 23rd (Thursday)]

Funny story - both my kids read early, but particularly kid #2. Yes, we had a hard time finding age-appropriate reading materials for her; be prepared for that.

Fast forward to third grade - she was eons ahead of the spelling lists her classmates were using, so her teacher encouraged her to use a dictionary to come up with a list of ten words she could study for that week, then the teacher would review it, and OK it. I volunteered in my kids' classrooms through fifth grade. I showed up one day to have #2's teacher pull me aside and tell me she had to have a 'talk' with her. Evidently, daughter was looking for the hardest words she could find in the dictionary, and came across a term that she didn't realize was a medical term. When her teacher saw it on the list, she asked her husband what it was because he was in medical school. Ends up it was the scientific term for some STD! Of course, #2 had no idea what an STD was, so the teacher had to navigate that conversation very carefully and explain to her she wasn't in trouble, but she couldn't use that word in her spelling list.

As far as skipping grades, although my oldest did not skip a grade, she did start K early, after two years of preschool (during which time she was learning to read). Cut-off in our state was 12 days before her birthday (every state is different in this regard) and in many other states, would be starting K based on her birthday. Anyway, her preschool teachers started encouraging us to see what our district required to bypass the cut-off date. We found out it would require a test and interview. She passed both with flying colors, so the district recommended she start early, although it was ultimately our choice. We talked with the principal of the school she'd be attending, and were encouraged. So we went with it. Yea, there were a few challenges socially, but she actually found her group of peers with kids who were within a month or two of her birthdate (and although she didn't share any classes with them because she was mostly in Honors and AP classes, she did share extracurriculars and electives with them), but had made the cut-off. She ended up graduating #10 in a class of 600+, so I think she managed OK.

Both of my kids had some amazing teachers; through 8th grade (high school starts in 9th), our school district had a program for academically gifted kids. This is where they really shone.

I remember when #1 was born, and the pediatrician visited us in the hospital. He told us, "Read as often and as much as you can to your kids, starting now." And we did. I'd like to think that had a part in their early reading. It was one of the first pieces of advice I gave #1 when our first grandson was born last summer. That... and singing to them.

The biggest issue was that since almost nothing I encountered in school was difficult, I hardly had to work for any of it. I wish my parents had found resources for things for me outside of school, because the school environment set me up to be an incredibly lazy procrastinator (also possibly a touch of inattentive ADD) - even my last minute stuff got As. Instead of learning how to study, I learned to game the system. So now, I often struggle with learning new things that *don’t* come incredibly easy (instruments or programming, for ex.) because I have to work really hard to just focus on studying.

I feel so seen!

I can't say that no one/nothing taught me to read, because I was an avid watcher of Sesame Street and the Electric Company, but I never had any formal lessons. I was reading chapter books by the time I turned 4. Learning was fun and easy, and I didn't have to pay much attention to keep up. Then when I reached algebra in the 7th grade, it was like hitting a brick wall. I didn't know how to deal with something I couldn't immediately comprehend. I half-assed my way through it but didn't really grasp the principles, so when we moved on to trigonometry, I got so far behind that I had to retake the class. This was a major ego blow. (I think I was in my 40s before I stopped having dreams of a blank page topped by an unintelligible string of numbers, letters, and symbols ending with the word "Factor.")

Verbal skills still come easily to me, but I have the same issues with focus at work. My youngest has ADD, and we are so alike that I've come to suspect I'm undiagnosed.

t/j (apologies, Gotta)

BSR - my sister's (4 years younger) grades were terrible and she got diagnosed pretty early on - this was the late 80s, so ADD was the only option. And she got pulled from the private school and put into public because the private school didn't see any need for accommodations, whereas public had to. Since my grades were stellar, they didn't bother with testing me. But I suspect I'm a bit on the scale on the inattentive side because I have the same work issues you mention, I often lose the thread of conversations because my mind wanders, but I can spend days focused on nothing but books. I don't have some of the other issues, like I'm not late, I don't misplace things (I remember where things are with visual memory), and I tend to come in the middle of the scale with online simplified "do you have adhd" type of tests, and/or a touch of auditory processing issues.

Anti-trig solidarity!

I hated trig too! But since I'm more visual, I was able to eke a way through it. Still love algebra though- it's a puzzle that's fun to take apart. I'm weird.

My autistic nephew was reading EVERYTHING the time from 3.5yrs on. He started going non-verbal then and my sister got him into heavy ABA therapy and he's very verbal now. He's a whiz with numbers too. I wonder if that's the visual side of processing outbalancing the auditory/verbal? I don't know, not a child development expert here, but there's a lot of evidence autism is thinking in images vs words.

I remember reading chapter books in 1st grade. Getting bored and reading encyclopedia/non-fiction scientific stuff in 2nd. I remember getting 3 vs free mixed up because they sounded the same to me- at 4 years old. I would watch the Sesame Street show and commercials would come on and the words were flashed across the screen with the announcer's voice. I think that's how I learned to read, really.

My kids have HUGE auditory/oral language proficiency, despite their dyslexia (not reversing letters, they can't correlate letters to sound and read words as pictures- sight read). It's amazing since all I have to do for them is walk them through a word and they've got the word memorized. My daughter DEVOURS books.

I tested 98% on the GRE for language. I think there's something to the hyperlexia idea. I also have ADHD and I suspect autism too. It's weird- I've been having early memories of attempts at socialization with my peers that failed since I was clearly NOT interested in "normal" childhood stuff. Autism and ADHD and depression and anxiety all go hand-in-hand and are all underdiagnosed in girls. I don't think it's too uncommon for kids to be bright, bored and inattentive. As well as for ADHD'ers to go into hyperfocus and get lost in a book for days on end. I actually don't read much anymore as a result of this- I tune out my family, home duties and work responsibilities when I'm absorbed like that.