How old were you when you learned how to read? (teaching, parents)

[Bridge781]

I was 6 I think, first grade.

It sounds like these days kids read earlier?

How old were your kids when they learned ?

I have known people who said they were reading at 2.

[Harpaint]

First grade for me too, in the 50's.

[saibot]

I was 4. In those days (early 1970s), it was not usual for children to be reading that young. I was the youngest of seven, and apparently I was the only one who was reading before first grade. The official story is that I learned by watching lots of Sesame Street.

I homeschooled my children during the early years. My oldest was reading very well at age 5 / Kindergarten. My second finally got the hang of it at the end of first grade, when she was already 7. The third was 6 and in first grade. I consider ages 5-7 a totally normal range.

I think a lot of children are reading younger these days because their parents are pushing literacy at an early age regardless of readiness. There are so many videos, apps, etc., for teaching tiny children to read. No one cared about that in the past; the general idea was that little ones should be playing rather than sitting and trying to read. Of course there were some who picked it up very young, but not like today.

[Marie Joseph]

I started picking up basic 3 and 4 letter words when I was 2.5 or so according to my parents who never pushed me into it. By 3.5 I was reading beginner books and absolutely loved reading. I get that from my mom's side and blame her for leaving books all over, lol.

I remember being upset when my kindergarten class went to the library on a field trip and the teacher tried to give me a beginner book to read and I was insisting on reading a regular book. I had to stand there and read some passages to her to prove I could read it to her and she got irritated with me over it. I went home crying after she berated me in front of the entire class for being a 'show off'. Shortly after that my parents moved me to a different kindergarten teacher.

Now with as early as kids are taught to read, that probably wouldn't have happened and hopefully doesn't happen.

I grew up in the 70's/80's. Of course we also had Sesame Street and The Electric Company shows on to help us learn our letters and numbers

[greatblueheron]

I was around 4-4.5 years of age.

Still reading obsessively, all these years later.

[P47P47]

I'm not sure exactly when I learned to read, but it was early enough that when I was in 1st grade, being bored to death with Dick and Jane, I asked the teacher if I could read to the class about the Revolutionary War submarine Turtle. The first sentence was "David Bushnell was a mathematician and engineer who lived at the time of the Revolutionary War."

A week later, I was in 2nd grade.

[irootoo]

I learned on my own before I went to school, so I was probably around 4.

[Sydney123]

Probably around 5 or 6, but by that time I was already pretty fluent in speaking English, French and Spanish ( both Latin and Castilian).

[reneeh63]

Before kindergarten...I remember at first being so excited to see all the books in the kindergarten room, then picking them up and being disappointed that they didn't have any words!

[Ruth4Truth]

I was 5 and it was in first grade. Nowadays, kids learn in kindergarten, where most of them are 5, too.