Yesterday, Klara’s second-grade teacher sat next to her for 20 minutes, trying to figure out why Klara was staring into an open book. She didn’t believe the kid was reading.
This does not bode well for the education system if a 7-year-old who reads is an uncommon sight in a classroom.
My older two learned at 7, despite my best efforts to teach them earlier. It’s about average, for boys. Girls average a little earlier.
But averages being what they are… I have very carefully not pushed any kind of phonics/reading on my 4yo, because that was such a disaster with his brothers, and he is teaching himself. I am sitting on my hands not trying to actively teach him to read, and only telling him stuff when he asks. He’s been studying his brothers’ writing activities, getting them (and sometimes me) to show him how to spell stuff and how to write letters and numbers, and today, looking out the window, he sounded out the letters on the side of the utility van in the road: “ck… ah…. ks” … “That’s the COX truck!” And he was right.
Can’t help but wonder if this is an older-siblings thing (eldest took the longest to walk, talk, read, etc.– subsequent kids all seemed desperate to ‘keep up’ with older sibs), idiosyncratic variation (all kids are different), or if they’d all have learned to read at 4 if I had only left them alone…
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I think my parents didn’t actively “teach” us anything other than the alphabet, and just read to us a lot and we picked it up before kindergarten. However, I was very young so I could be forgetting something.
I do remember that one of the first books I read was that nauseating book “The Rainbow Fish.” Luckily I soon moved on to better things.
We read to him, and I bribe his brothers to read to him as well, so he gets read to a lot 😉
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This mirrors my experience as well. I read constantly to my older kids and less to my younger just because I’m pulled more directions these days but the 8yo is by far the most capable reader for his age and the 4yo begged to learn so we’re working slowly at her own pace through the books.
I was an early reader so it was surprising to me how much a couple of my kids struggled with it but reassuring to discover the breadth of the age range for transitioning into fluency.
Kharking
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Yeah, I learned at 3 so it was a surprise to me that mine weren’t ready at that age. I had just assumed…
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” despite my best efforts to teach them earlier”
When I grew public schools were still a thing (before they became one of the first victims of neoliberal disinvestment in education) and my parents let the pros handle teaching me to read and write. Fortunately they used a phonics-style method about connections between letters and sounds – I’m sure I would have floundered in any kind of see-say system.
I probably spent time looking at writing before I could read (the house had books and magazines and my older brother had comic books) but I only have hazy memories of that.
I do remember “writing” on walls and a piec of furniture or two (mostly just connected loops) which was not encouraged….
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My oldest son learned to read at 4, and was reading chapter books before he started formal schooling at 5. His kindergarten teacher actually yelled at him for reading. She had told the kids to get a book from the shelf to “look at” while she prepared the next activity. When she was ready, she told the kids to put the books back. My son raised his hand and asked if he could keep his, because he hadn’t finished reading it. “You’re not supposed to be reading the book!!!” My perfectionist kid who did everything he could to never be in trouble came home in tears that day, and when he explained why, I was livid.
I met first with his teacher – who reluctantly conceded she shouldn’t have yelled, but insisted that “he can’t be reading yet, it’s not fair to the other kids.” I assumed that this was the naïve mistake of a rookie (it was her 1st year teaching), so I elevated my concerns to the vice-principal…who took the teacher’s side. Holding him back from reading until the other kids were proficient, the VP told me, would keep him from getting bored and hating school. It was critical for each class to be “taught to the middle” and that way stragglers on either end (both high and low achievers) had the best chance to stay with their peers. In a few years the’d determine whether he could be eligible for the accelerated learning track that would start when he reached 4rd grade.
I didn’t have much faith as a parent with children going into public education, based on my own experiences, but that just destroyed any I had left. Needless to say, he didn’t remain there.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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