What does "my three year old can read" mean?...

[jayman]

I've read a few posts on a education website I was browsing for info on NYC's Gifted and Talented program - they test 4 year olds... one hour, a bunch of spoken questions, no help, no second chances, no hints.

Anyway, I read a few posts on that site about children who could read at 3 and I'm a bit confused about what that actually means...

Where should a three year old be in terms of reading? I assume, where at age matters greatly - no? Just turned three is very different that 3 and 10 months.

 

[Xero]

A three year old shouldn't really be able to read. I don't think it is abnormal at all for a three year old to not know any words at all, not reading until kindergarten is usually completely and totally normal, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I think there is a choice you can make that can enable your child to read by the time he's three though. I think that a three year old CAN read, like they have the ability if you teach them. From the time he's a baby until about age four there's this window where their brains are making connections faster than any point in their entire life. It's the time when they learn to talk just by listening to you. If you taught them, they could learn to read at the same time and have fun doing it. Haha I feel like I'm advertising it! lol but honestly, I could read things at three because my mom taught me to with her own methods. I could pick up anything and read it pretty well when I was four. I'm not a genius lol.

A lot of people find this idea ridiculous, but I think it makes more sense than anything. How often do you see grade school kids struggling to read? It's because that learning window closed at four-ish. Just think about how magical it is how kids learn to talk and pick up the language pattern like adding -ed and -s onto words without us really teaching them that.

I've seen other kids doing it too, and I saw an infomercial for a DVD program called "Your Baby Can Read" the other day with home videos from kids that used it and did other stuff with three year olds reading ANYTHING. And babies reading a few things. It was crazy. A lot of people read a lot while pointing to the words to their kids, that's supposed to help. Playing word games and games with letters. There's a good book about it too called "Native Reading".

There's a lot you can do. But it's totally possible, and you don't have to have a "prodigy child" or anything. I don't know, but I strongly believe it's possible. You just have to be patient and spend a lot of time with it.

I'm working on it, I just started letting Eli watch those DVD's the other day. I thought they looked like they would be boring and he would lose interest, I really did. I was hopeful anyway though. Can you believe he LOVED IT? When it was over I was like "Yay all done!" And he started CRYING? lol he threw a fit because it was over. We watched it again cause I was like well hey why not it can't hurt and when it was over he CRIED AGAIN?? lol I couldn't believe it. He's not the kind of kid that likes to watch TV and he never keeps attention with tv shows, but he always keeps his eyes totally glued to the screen when I have the reading dvd on. It's pretty cool.

 

[jayman]

Thanks for the input Xero. Defintely makes sense to me.

With so many flash cards, work books, and education shows stressing letters and sounds and numbers and math - I try to focus more on comprehension by asking questions when reading to Liam. Saw a video of a 3 yr old reciting the periodic table of elements... defintely a great memory builder

 

[Xero]

Yeah, it's really awesome. I hope I can help Eli learn as much as possible before school.

 

[zeitgeist]

I can attest to the fact that it's entirely possible that kids can read when they're three.

By two and a half I could sit down with a little golden book and read it to my mom cover to cover, even upside down (that's how my mom noticed I was reading already - she caught me following along while I looked over the top of the book). By the time I was three I had moved on to more complicated children's books. "Where the Wild Things Are," that sort.

Math, on the other hand... :err:

 

[Xero]

So you memorized it? That's possible too. Happens a lot, actually. What I mean is however, that my mom could hand me the newspaper and I could read you the headlining article. No memorization about it. I've known three and four year olds that could read everything they saw at the grocery store or pick up a magazine at the doctor's office, and just read the words cause they know how to read. You can teach a child how to actually READ. Honestly!

 

[jayman]

So, I think what we're saying is that there is memorizing words on sight - which is good, because well, there are sight words. Then there's sounding out words and recognizing similiarties so that bump to hump isn't so much of a jump. Some where in there is comprehension right?

Liam started stacking toy bins on a chair in an effort to reach his new Tag Reader that he loves so much... I said, "no, no, no, remember humpty dumpty?" Amazingly, he stopped.

 

[zeitgeist]

So you memorized it? That's possible too.

No. There were book I memorized on the way to that point, but if you had handed me a new little golden book I hadn't seen before back then I could have read it to you. Slowly, to be sure, but I'd have gotten there.


My mom and grandma read to me just about constantly. Showed me letters and numbers. I watched Sesame Street and The Electric Company just about religiously. After a while, I just started to pick it up.

Then mom started getting new little books for me, and had me read them to her, helped me sound it out but let me go ahead when I picked up steam. When I successfully got a page without assistance, she told me what an excellent job I did and put a star at the top of the page - which tickled me pink, motivated me to do a good job on the next page.

My daughter isn't due for another few months yet, but her nursery is already rimmed with letters and numbers around the top of the wall, and the bookshelf is already filled with books - some of them that my mom used to read to me. I don't know that she'll start that early, and I won't be disappointed if she doesn't... but I'm sure as heck going to give her the opportunity.

 

[Xero]

Oh I'm sorry! Well that's awesome too.

I was going off of your statements that you could read it upside down and follow along while looking over the top of the book, those are indications of memorization rather than actually reading the words so I thought you meant you memorized it.

 

[PennQuaker09]

It's extremely normal for a 3 year old to be able to read. I think I was just an intuitive kid, I picked up on things. My strong point has always been math though. I was multiplying by the time I was 4.

 

[Aponder]

I could read at 3 and still read a lot now, though my tastes have changed quite a bit. It may have been 4, who knows, I was young. I do know that when I was 5 I was nearing the end of the Hardy Boys collection and looking for more.

I miss them days.

 

[Nossar]

hi!
my son is 4 years old and I know he could be reading if I really wanted to but I don't see the point.
There is no saying that this is normal or not normal, just unnecessary. some children will show such an interest at an early age that they'll try and manage it but as for others let them rest

 

[gr8mom]

Wow kind of makes the fact that my daughter was reading first grade level or higher before she turned 5 kind of sound like she's behind rather than ahead.

 

[sikirulai]

You need not worry yourself so much about the age when the child starts to read.The fact still remains that we all are not made the same way.

Your child's ability to read at any age does not necessarily depend on what they teach them at school, but instead on the child's natural composition.

Human difference is one thing we learnt at the university.Treat everybody according to their natural make up.

I know most parents would want their children to begin to read,write or even be eloquent at such an early age.The question is: WHY?

My answer to that is Pride.They want to be known as the parent of so-and-so child who could do this at such an age."Mother of a Genius",sort of.

 

[zeitgeist]

I know most parents would want their children to begin to read,write or even be eloquent at such an early age.The question is: WHY?

My answer to that is Pride.They want to be known as the parent of so-and-so child who could do this at such an age."Mother of a Genius",sort of.

I don't remember a time when I was unable to read and wouldn't have it any other way. I hope to be able to give my daughter the same head start that my mom afforded me.

Pride? Sure, I'm certain that a certain sense of pride will come with it if she should manage to learn to read as early as I did. I'm equally as certain that there will be a certain sense of pride the first time she makes a macaroni picture of a sheep that has somewhere near the correct number of limbs. She's my daughter.

 

[Xero]

It has nothing to do with pride whatsoever, and I'd be the first to admit it if I was proud of my kid for being smart. Toddlers enjoy learning to read and they have the ability to do it while having fun (nothing to do with studying whatsoever) only playing games and watching fun shows and enjoying mom reading a good book and pointing to the words. And the only reason it's on my mind to get Eli to read before three is because a door closes after that age that prevents them from learning it so easily and that's why so many kids in grade school struggle to read. The ones that learned before three will have no trouble, because it will not be something that has to be pounded into their brain, it will be something that comes naturally to them that they learn more of every day just like TALKING. Do you think teaching our kids to talk is a matter of pride?

Maybe we should just let them be, and not help them learn something that would frustrate them not to be able to do later. That makes sense. There's nothing wrong with not getting into the activities that help your child learn to read if you don't want to. But there's no reason to trash talk it when you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

Check out the research. It PROVES that it IS easier for a toddler to learn to read by A LOT than a five or six year old. And it has nothing to do with making them do anything, no work involved not one bit. My mom read to me for fun and sang abc's and had me watch Sesame Street and pointed to the words and I learned all on my own because it's EASY for toddlers to pick stuff up. Can you imagine trying to completely learn another language right now as an adult? It would be very hard. A toddler can learn three languages fluently. Think about that for a bit.

You need to look it up and read about it before you judge the idea like that.

 

[jayman]

I do my best to teach Liam as much as I can without boring him or pushing him too much NOT because I want to feel proud or because I want to show him off, but rather because I'm SCARED to death.

The world is tough place. I want to give him the tools necessary to pursue whatever his heart desires. This includes a good solid well-rounded education and a confident resilient attitude, and I'm sure, a few other things I haven't figured out yet. Sure, some people are naturally capable of these things and natural ability goes along way, but even natural ability needs nurturing.... a con man is great communicator after all, he just lacks a good moral base.

 

[Lorelei]

There are two books, two different schools of thought that I'd like to add to this discussion. "How to Teach your Baby to Read" by Glenn Doman, and "Homeschool Burnout" by Ray and Dorothy Moore. In the first, Glenn Doman, founder of the Institutes for the achievement of Human Potential, learned how to help brain injured infants by teaching them to read. Later he figured that if brain injured babies could learn, then healthy babies could learn as well. His first book was published half a century ago. Recently he was awarded a medal at an international conference for his work. I have used his method, and my firstborn learned to read at age 2 1/2. She enjoyed it. She had a lot of fun. She is a great reader, although she is my only child to wear glasses (I have heard that there is some relationship between early reading and vision problems).

The second book is really a great book for parents whether or not they homeschool, or feel "burned out". Raymond and Dorothy believe that children should not be taught to read until age ten. They claim that teaching kindergartners to read has only a fifty percent success rate, and that low-reading groups and remedial reading classes are filled with many more boys than girls nationwide. That poor reading leads to low self-esteem, poor achievement, school dropout, and crime. That teaching young children to read takes YEARS. But if you wait until a boy is ten to teach him to read, it only takes three weeks, and has 100 percent success. They felt that the early years are very important, formative years, and that much can and should be taught to young children, but reading isn't one of them. This couple was also prominent in their field, not just a couple who got a book published. They are (she has passed away) world-renowned researchers with more than 35 books published.


For more information:
Moore Foundation : Home
iahp.org : | : The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential

 

[acceptTheChaos]

I agree with Xero that early reading and late reading are all within the spectrum of "normal." But I also agree with her that, properly taught with games and social techniques, teaching reading earlier can be <I>easier</I> than teaching to later kids. I too think the book "Native Reading" is a great resource for games and techniques to teach reading early through play. The "frequently asked questions" page at their website is a good place to see what early reading is and is not about:
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions About Native Reading
A friend of mine used the methods in the book and her son was reading at 2, so I know it can work. I started later with my daughter, but she was reading at three and is still going strong. And, btw, it's not just memorization, native reading uses both phonics and whole word approaches, not one or the other.

 

[Jeremy+3]

Here all children are reading by four at the latest, so nothing special with a three year old being able to read in my opinion.