My DS taught himself to read - we think - just by working out the connection between what we were saying and the word on the page when we read to him. He wanted everything read to him - instruction manuals, recipes, inserts from CD cases. My Mum would be sat with him reading things like ‘Executive Producer Garry Jones, Mixing by Serena Smith’ for hours on end. We just thought it was hilarious. I don’t know when he actually learned to read exactly, definitely before the age of 4 as this is when he picked up one of DD’s books she’d brought home from school and just read the whole thing aloud and we were gobsmacked. By that stage he could read any word you showed him pretty much.
When he’d just turned 2 I took him to a playgroup run by trainee early childhood teachers. He sat down to do some art and the teacher asked him can you write your name, I assume just seeing if he picked up the pencil the right way round and maybe made a mark on the page. He wrote his name correctly. He’d never done it before, had never been taught by anyone (he was at home with me FT). The teacher was young, she just accepted it, I was a bit taken aback but thought ok he’s picked that up somewhere.
It was school that eventually destroyed his love of learning. He’s not autistic, just a regular kid who happens to be super bright (his IQ was tested at 99.9%). But unfortunately he got some awful teachers early on who just lived to tear down anyone they felt was a tall poppy. Or they ignored him because he could already do what they were teaching and he was quiet and well behaved so he was one less kid to worry about. We switched schools to one with a G&T program and he did get some lovely teachers there but a lot of the damage had been done.
I do feel the parent on the news will live to regret publicising their child. They will find out just how awful parents can be when they are jealous of a child. They’ll be accused of robbing him of a childhood, forcing him to read and count instead of “being a normal child” as if being intelligent is not normal. My DS always did both - loved learning AND playing. Now as a teenager he learns about things he is interested in and tries to ignore the rest. Fortunately for him he absolutely loves sport, so he fits in with his peers and that makes him happy. The IQ is still there and I suspect, much like my DH, that he will thrive more when he’s out of school and can learn about the things he loves. In my family there are several people with very high IQs. Some have lived happy fulfilled lives and others have suffered terribly. Our main focus for DS is for him to be in the first group, not the second.