Learning to Read

[DrakeB]

At what age can you start teaching a child to read?
I've seen plenty of suggestions and help topics that talk about getting your child to read at an early stage.

Anyone come across these types of learning programs?

bit.ly/3jz51N2

I'm intrigued as I know our little one is fascinated by books already without necessarily understanding the words

[DelphiniumBlue]

That is an American programme, so the recommendations need to take into account the expectations of the US school system.
Most schools in the UK use synthetic phonics of some description, often RML, which is very effective. If you teach your child to read whole words by sight, it is a different system so just be aware of that.
But if your child loves books and reading with you, and is starting to recognise some words and spelling patterns, and you talk about different sounds so that they understand that that there is a different grapheme ( written symbol) for a "ck" sound as opposed to a "ss" sound, that can only help them.
FWIW, taught my eldest child to read the words that he was interested in, by sight, at about 2 and a half. So train, station, truck, that sort of thing. He loved being able to do it, and I enjoyed it. I don't think it gave him any huge advantage though, I didn't do it with his brothers and they were all fluent readers by 7.