When did your child learn to read?

[Underanothername]

My dd is four and has been back yeared so is not due to start reception until next year. We are not sure about starting her even then and might possibly wait another year so that she starts school when she is 6/7.
However, I keep reading threads in 'primary education' dealing with problems such as 'My dd is still having picture books in reception' 'Why is my ds not in the top ability reading group (in reception)?' or 'Why is my child not having chapter books in year one?'
I basically cannot see why we make children learn to read so early, but occasionally get anxious, that dd shows no interest whatsoever.
She quite likes being read to, but much prefers me making up stories. She loves drawing, colouring and watching stories on dvds, playing imaginary games with her toys and will illustrate stories which we make up together and I scribe. She speaks two languages and is enjoying learning words and phrases from a third.
I need reassuring that she will learn to read in her own time.

this thread i posted on may help!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/home_ed/1115774-learning-to-read-without-being-taught

whoops not sure i copied the link properly, go down the main page of questions on home ed page, its on there posted by me!

Well, my eldest was reading at 3 and by 5 had a reading age of 16+, DS2 started to read in P1 (age about 5), DD the same. BUT DS3 had a reading age of 6 at age 11, he didn't get the hang of it until he was past 12, now at almost 13 he is an avid reader. DS4 is 8 and is only now beginning to read, but he has never been to school and has very much taken things at his own pace.

I think if you daughter is bilingual that's amazing. If she enjoys being read to, so much the better, listening is as important as anything else. She will learn when she is ready and it suits her. DS2 wanted to read the words on his nintendo games, DS4 is much the same. That is their motivating factor. When your DD finds her's, then she will learn. 4 is very, very young. I can't understand this desperation to have children reading so early. It's not a competition or, at least, it shouldn't be.

13 years old.

She'd left school aged nearly 9 unable to read or spell even her own name.
Diagnosed as very severely dyslexic, with no word attack skills at all.

She would become hysterical at any attempt to do any of the reading schemes.

Eventually we listened to other home educators and beacme totally automous educators, we facilitated whatever she needed. We read stories, the newspaper, magazine articles, anything and everything she wanted.
We watched TV and DVDs together, if we out and about I read museum display discriptions/theatre programmes-or the home ed community did it for her.

It didn't mean that her education was neglected, instead it ran ahead, whilst allowing reading and spelling to catch up in it's own time.
We did everything we could to culture a love of reading and the written word (and turn around all the damage formal schooling had done to that)

Every child wants to read, it's how we access much of the world, and the child knows that and doesn't like missing out.

DD2 finally began to 'get it' aged 13.
By 15 she started an OU starter course, and achieved all of the outcomes, which was said to put her at University entrance level at 16.

She used that course to get herself into FE college, where she is achieving distinctions in her course work.

She's 18 now and says that it was like someone switched on a button and she could see and recognise the shapes of the words and hear the phonetics, which simply hadn't happened before.

Interstingly dd2 is the one who is interested now in word games and crossword puzzles with her father.
She is the one interested in the root and language base of words.

The other two (bith of whom are dyslexic but less severely) learned to read earlier, and just accept words are spelled on a particular way (as I did).

my dd was reading on her own by three

DSs both at 4/5, DD started learning to read at 4 but took a little longer to get it. She's still quite slow at reading, compared to the boys, who whizz through books but doing OK. I probably held DS1 back for quite a while - just didn't think he'd manage longer books. Then gave him a Famous Five towards the end of year 1 (he was flexi-schooling) and he read it in 2 days! I asked him loads of questions about the book and it was clear that he understood it and had got the whole storyline. He hasn't stopped reading since! I made sure DS2 had access to harder books as and when he wanted them.

Regarding DD, having read recently that reading below their reading age helps them improve fluency and speed, (and remembering that I read below my reading age until I was about 9 or 10), I'm setting her easier books for her directed reading for a few months to see if that helps with her speed. It's not a major problem but she flags and loses interest in longer books, even though she wants to read them.

ds is 7. I think I would now call him a reader, just, although he will still miss quite a lot in the average chapter book for his age group. But he has now been observed reading when he could have been doing something else .

It has all taken much longer than I thought it would and I have had to tell myself to back off several times. I thought most children just 'clicked' with reading at some age and that the black marks just became meaningful text. It does seem to happen with some children but for ds it has been much more gradual.

DS is 3 (almost 4) and just starting to read by himself. He loves being read to and asked me to teach him a few months ago and has been getting on really well. At least now we've found a method that works anyway! If he hadn't expressed an interest in learning to read, I wouldn't be teaching him. I'd just continue reading to him and let him learn by osmosis.

I don't think there's any one rule for all. It depends a lot on when they have gained the necessary preliminary awareness about clearly distinguishing phonic sounds.

I wanted to teach our oldest to read early, because I was reading fluently before I started school and I just preumed anyone could. But my wife, who is a professional in this, insisted he wasn't ready yet. He went to school and pottered along learning the necessary bit and pieces to catch up, always with us reading to him a lot and encouraging him. Then at I think about age 6, within the space of about 5 weeks he went from 0 to 60 like a turbo-powered just engine. He just suddenly "got it", and at the end of that period for effectively reading like an adult, bar a little vocabulary. His reading age was later measured at 12.5 when he'd just turned 9.

With our youngest it was different, she was clearly up to it very early and I taught her the year before she started school. She's now in reception and reading fluently already.

My older daughter would have nothing to do with reading until she was 6.5. Then she asked me to help her learn to read. She slogged on cheerfully but found it heavy going until she was nine, when fluency appeared suddenly. Now of course I think it would have been better if she'd started at nine and probably she would have found it fairly easy then.

However, I don't think she would've been happy to wait any longer to make a start. She is a real conformist and even in a home ed environment she was keenly aware that other children in the wider society usually learned to read earlier. I never managed to reassure her that it was OK to wait.

That, I think, is the only problem with a child tackling reading later than it is done at school: even with laid-back trusting parents, some children do overhear what people say, and care, and worry that they don't measure up.

Happily, my younger child breezes along quite cheerfully in her own little world, quite unaware at 4.5 of what others are doing or how she compares to them. Perhaps she will come to reading unselfconsciously when she feels ready, instead of when she thinks she ought to. That would be a lovely thing to see.

My ds was put off reading at school. He taught himself to read at around age 8 (after pulling him out of school at age 5) because he wanted to play an online game called World of Warcraft.

I listened to other HE parents and read John Holt books then completely backed off trying to 'get him to read'....it just happened when he found something he really wanted to read about.

DS started 'reading'/recognising words at 2 and was reading fluently at age 3. He's nearly 5 now and just reads everything he can get his hands on! He loves those Usborne lift the flap books - see inside your body/cars/planet earth/how things work at the moment.