Rant Children can learn to read from age 3

[Pamela Jo]

Kentucky two-year-old’s high IQ makes her youngest female member of Mensa

Isla McNabb’s ability to read back words written on an erasable tablet led her parents to contact Guinness World Records

www.theguardian.com

In the days of one-room school houses and governesses children began learning to read at age 3. Sight and phonetically, sounding out syllables. My grandmother's McGuffey readers would probably be assigned to community colleges today instead of 5th graders.

This little girl may be precocious, but no genius unless she can also do calculus and at least recite the table of elements. Why not recognise the genius in all children.

 

[Hannah F]

I'm no genius, as many here will attest to, but I could read at 3 years old, all be it upside down. My sister, age 4, was learning to read. I stood opposite where she sat and looked down on the book as she moved her finger along and either she or my dad uttered the words. My dad realised I could read when he thought I was pretending and turned the book the right way up. I turned it back upside down and said I couldn't read it the other way. He asked me to read aloud. I did. In complete sentences. It became a party piece for my dad to show off to his friends.

I don't think this girl is necessarily an exceptional genius (after all, how many kids at this age are IQ tested in this way?) It is more likely that other young children don't learn to read because people don't expect they'll be able to so don't expose them to the experience. Or there are no suitable books in the house. Or the parents/guardians cannot read.

 

[Pamela Jo]

I'm no genius, as many here will attest to, but I could read at 3 years old, all be it upside down. My sister, age 4, was learning to read. I stood opposite where she sat and looked down on the book as she moved her finger along and either she or my dad uttered the words. My dad realised I could read when he thought I was pretending and turned the book the right way up. I turned it back upside down and said I couldn't read it the other way. He asked me to read aloud. I did. In complete sentences. It became a party piece for my dad to show off to his friends.

I don't think this girl is necessarily an exceptional genius (after all, how many kids at this age are IQ tested in this way?) It is more likely that other young children don't learn to read because people don't expect they'll be able to so don't expose them to the experience. Or there are no suitable books in the house. Or the parents/guardians cannot read.

Like Ginger Rogers, you learned to do it backwards-maybe even in your mother's heels.

 

[Peyton Stafford]

As a young child in California, in the early 1950s, my teachers dictated how they taught. Both my parents worked as elementary school teachers, but in other school districts. Mom was a credentialed psychotherapist. Dad was close to earning a PhD in philosophy. But they needed to earn a living and feed us offspring. And they liked the short working hours.

My teachers used the Dick and Jane primers. Boring stories about kids playing in their backyards. See Dick see Jane watch Spot run. Spot was their dog. "Learn the shapes of the words," they said. As if alphabetic languages expressed meaning through word shapes.

My younger brother, in kindergarten, learned phonics. Taught me one afternoon in the back seat of the family Studebaker. Plymouth looks like Ply-Mouth but reads Plemouth. I figured it out.

Sorry if this sounds stupid, but I felt I should share.

 

[Pamela Jo]

As a young child in California, in the early 1950s, my teachers dictated how they taught. Both my parents worked as elementary school teachers, but in other school districts. Mom was a credentialed psychotherapist. Dad was close to earning a PhD in philosophy. But they needed to earn a living and feed us offspring. And they liked the short working hours.

My teachers used the Dick and Jane primers. Boring stories about kids playing in their backyards. See Dick see Jane watch Spot run. Spot was their dog. "Learn the shapes of the words," they said. As if alphabetic languages expressed meaning through word shapes.

My younger brother, in kindergarten, learned phonics. Taught me one afternoon in the back seat of the family Studebaker. Plymouth looks like Ply-Mouth but reads Plemouth. I figured it out.

Sorry if this sounds stupid, but I felt I should share.

Not stupid at all. I'm glad you shared. Unfortunately bad methods of teaching reading are so rife that the reading teachers I worked with called it dysteachia. More children can't read because of that than actual dyslexia. What you observe empirically has been proven with MRI imaging. The brain cannot process more than a few sounds. Thus if you break words down into syllables you can read words of any size. Even supercalifragilisticxbialidocious. If you have to memorise the shape of every word in the English language- you are set up to fail. The other thing we now know is that hearing plays a far greater role in learning to read than vision. You were a very bright child to recognise the flaw in the system.

My oldest was so severely dyslexia that when he was tested at 6 there was a 90 percent gap in potential vs what he could do. He had the vocabulary of a 16 year old but couldn't consistently remember the alphabet past ABC or count to 10. I'd like to see Lindamood Bell methods taught in preschool. (Lindamood and Bell were teachers who worked with deaf children. They found partially hearing kids could learn to read after teaching them phonetic sounds with mouth feel) It would bypass auditory processing disorder and fix it when children's brains are wired to learn language. The visual form of dyslexia could be screened and countered when they go on to fluency in primary school. And every child would benefit. The cost would be to schools who would have to train teachers in methods that require some aptitude from practitioners. Good teachers are artists.

You dont say, but I know from my sons what pain there is in your story and what joy. I'm so happy that you found the solution before you were hurt any further.