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Two persons have commented that early reading may not be good and could have affected other areas. Those are the people I am writing to, not you. I know you can't get I'm not trying to "prove" anything, but discussing a possibility.
No, you're not.You are some how trying to connect "dementia"(#104)with a thread about children reading at an early age.
No, you're not.You are some how trying to connect "dementia"(#104)with a thread about children reading at an early age.
Fine. I'll go along with the prevailing logic and since this is a thread about children reading at early age, I'll leave with a positive note.
It is great a child is reading at 3. This has absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt no relation with any mental ability as the child develops or even less at older age.
Doesn’t change the fact word calling isn’t really reading. Comprehension is required for reading, and I’m guessing at 3 that’s not happening here.
This is his parents decision, not yours. Your opinion actually doesn't matter.
That being said, continue teaching him. If he enjoys it, he will benefit from it.
Please remember, daily school isn't just about academic capabilities, it is also about maturation.
Yup Being ahead in one area doesn't mean he'll be ahead in others. In fact, most likely the gains in one area are costing others. I remember reading some research done years ago on teaching babies to read. They succeeded but the babies talked and walked later than normal. It turned out to be a trade off not an advantage.
Unfortunately, too many people put too much stock in early reading when it means nothing. It's not a sign of intelligence or maturity. It's normal for children to do some things on the early side and some later. So let them do what they enjoy. They're only kids once.
That said, instilling a love of reading early certainly is not a bad thing but there is a risk of an early reading child missing things later. My older dd is a good example. She learned to read before she started school and simply didn't pay attention to phonics in school. She thought she already knew how to read but what she was doing was memorizing words. Without the ability to sound out words she would have reached a point where her ability to memorize words would have limited her vocabulary by about 5th grade. She was testing well above grade level in 3rd grade but something didn't seem right to me so I had her tested. They said she knew only a handful of consonant sounds and no vowels. However, once she heard and saw a word she knew that word but we have a limited capacity to memorize words so she needed decoding skills. We ended up doing hooked on phonics with both her and her sister just for good measure.
ETA: My brother and SIL refused to ANYTHING academic with their kids before they started school.Neither even knew the alphabet let alone read. The kindergarten teacher sent a note home saying that their kids didn't know the alphabet. My SIL sent a note back saying 'That's because you haven't taught it to them yet." One is a doctor and the other a lawyer while my early reader didn't make through a year of college (she had a baby and dropped out of school) while my late reader (6 1/2 before she even started reading) is studying to be an engineer. Seriously, what kids do at 4 says nothing about where they will end up.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 10-08-2017 at 07:00 PM..
My oldest child also started reading at age 3. She probably could have started sooner, if I'd actively taught her. But, while I absolutely did encourage her love of reading, and provided a good environment for doing so, I didn't have any kind of curriculum or method. She just picked it up on her own, for the most part. She did have a full level of comprehension, too.
She started at age almost 6, due to birthday cut-off dates. I was somewhat concerned that she'd spend her days hearing about "A is for apple" and become bored, but that didn't happen. In fact, I was both surprised and impressed with the ability of her teachers, in just the local public school, to provide differentiated instruction. She had a very high reading ability, but almost no writing skills. They managed to meet her at her level on both counts, and move her forward, in both areas. They had her not just reading books, but really thinking about what she'd read. She was encouraged to consider the character's point of view, author's intent, make predictions, etc. I was really very impressed.
OP, I'd encourage your family to continue nurturing your grandson's love of reading. I wouldn't necessarily push the technical skill so much as the fun of the experience. If he enjoys reading, he'll do so on his own volition, and his technical skills will grow simply by the increased exposure.
I would also inquire as to how your local school handles children who are reading upon entrance to kindergarten. My child was not the only one; in her grade of approximately 120 kids, there were a dozen others who also were able to read. The school was able to accommodate them with a higher level of instruction, but without moving them from their same-age peers. I appreciate that now that my daughter is 12 and in middle school. There's enough social pressure there without the added issue of being younger and less mature than her peers. Others have already mentioned being a young high school graduate, if you do start early, but I'd also add that a 10-year old put into a group of 11/12 -year olds is going to get a social education you may not want them to have.
Doesn’t change the fact word calling isn’t really reading. Comprehension is required for reading, and I’m guessing at 3 that’s not happening here.
It's no secret that fluency and comprehension are two different things.
I'm just not sure where the idea that if the brain is stimulated in the ways that the act of reading stimulates the brain at an early age, that means there is going to be a correlating drastic loss of cognition at a later age. It seems like that poster thinks that you only have so many years built in of cognitive ability, and if you start "using your brain"* too early, you're going to run out of brain and get dementia...all because you could identify words at three or four!! That isn't how it works.
*Interesting, too, is the idea that babies and toddlers somehow aren't "using their brains."
Kindergarten is really not about reading. It's about social skills and learning to take turns, controlling one's emotions in class, hand/eye coordination, expressing oneself artistically, and learning to take directions from the teacher. In kindergarten, recess and lunch are as important as learning reading and numbers.
I don't know if you have any young children right now, but I'd say, from my recent experience with my own kids, who are currently in 1st, 5th, and 7th grades at public schools, that kindergarten very much IS about reading these days.
Not that the social skills are not important, but academically, they spend the bulk of their full day learning how to read. It's not a half day of painting pictures and singing songs, like when I was kid a generation ago. For someone who already knows how to read, there has to be something for them to do, beyond the basics. We were lucky in that our kids' school did differentiate for those who were already reading upon entry.
ETA: My brother and SIL refused to ANYTHING academic with their kids before they started school.Neither even knew the alphabet let alone read. The kindergarten teacher sent a note home saying that their kids didn't know the alphabet. My SIL sent a note back saying 'That's because you haven't taught it to them yet."
What did they do with their kids? Keep them in boxes? Trying to figure out how you would limit a child's exposure to learning (not even going to try to speculate on why you'd want to).
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