I learned the alphabet at school, aged 5 or so, after I’d already been reading for a few years - I mean, I knew the letters and phonemes, but learning them in a specific order just seemed so arbitrary - because it is.

My parents read to me from a very early age, with the specific goal of getting me reading as early as possible in mind - and it worked. I still remember the “holy shit” moment when I finally decrypted Spot the Dog, which they must have read to me three times a day for months on end. I was reading ladybird books by the time I was 2.5, and Enid Blyton from aged 3 or so. From then on I preferred reading for myself, as it was faster, and I wasn’t reliant on a narrator who got bored after a chapter. I was hooked on stories - tv wasn’t really a thing, as we lived overseas and I was getting confused enough between Cantonese and English as it was - so I read books.

I was ahead throughout school, started university at 16 - I think mostly because my precocious and voracious reading had given me a store of knowledge and connections between concepts that my peers just didn’t have. I went through the entire popular science section at the junior school library in my first year, and then just coasted my way through class, while continuing to read on all subjects. There wasn’t much I was taught in class I didn’t already know.

So, I think it’s very much about early investment in reading - it encourages curiosity, and giving a knowledge hungry child the tools to have an infinite world of deep information available to them forges lifelong habits. I still read a book a week, give or take, and still thirst for more knowledge.

You seem to believe that it is because your parents were reading a lot to you that you were able to read by yourself at the age of 4.

We read books to our daughter at least 1 hour a day since she is maybe 1 year old. Yet she does not know or is even willing to read by herself, as most children of her age, which seems perfectly normal to us. But she already developed a love for books that will certainly be very useful to her for studies and entertainment. This is what we should aim for as parents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlexia is a rare but real thing.

But if parents are super dedicated to the goal of getting their kid to read as early as possible, and spend hours per day on reading drills, it’s probably not impossible for most kids to start independently reading simple books by 2.5 or 3.

I’m not convinced this is a goal particularly worth prioritizing, compared to development of other skills. YMMV.

A lot surely comes down to the personality and preferences of the kid.

I know it is possible for a few "special" kids to read at 2.5 or 3 (I didn't know about the word hyperlexia though, thanks for the link !). My point is that such kids will read very early, whether their parents are super dedicated or not (unless, of course, their parents have no book at all and never read which is unfortunately not so uncommon)

On the other hand I am convinced "normal" kids won't read before 5, whatever you do and how hard you try. This makes it even more unworthy to try to reach such goal imho.

> I am convinced "normal" kids won't read before 5, whatever you do and how hard you try

I am pretty sure a typical kid (say, at least 75% of all kids) could learn to read simple books by 3 if the parents were fanatical about it and spent hours every day prioritizing the kid learning to read per se, instead of focusing on broader goals. But it doesn’t seem to me like this is worth prioritizing so much, compared to all the other skills small kids should be practicing: gross motor control, strength, and stamina; fine motor skills; getting along with other kids; listening comprehension; logical reasoning; visual observation; understanding the behavior of physical objects; understanding living things; understanding their society and built environment; helping out with family chores; learning to take care of themselves; etc.

Most kids end up learning to read at 5–7 years old instead because the parents spend time doing other things with them, the kids spend time on other activities, and often the parents have other things to do and the kids must entertain themselves. This is totally fine.

My son is 3.5 and will probably be at the stage of reading simple books (say Green Eggs & Ham level) by about 4 or 4.5. I’m sure we could have gotten him to that point by 2.5 or 3 if we made it our top priority. But I’d much rather spend 1–2 hours per day reading a wide variety of enjoyable books to him and inculcating a love of books (not to mention practicing his listening comprehension, vocabulary, and general language skills) than spend that time on phonics drills.

There weren’t reading drills - it was just a constant activity. Any time we were out, they’d be pointing at signs and nudging me through sounding them out. I think the first word that I got the hang of reading was “garage” - it fascinated me that both g and a had two totally different sounds in a short word, and I probably saw it dozens of times a day around HK. At home I’d sit under the stairs painstakingly decrypting large print picture books. I’ve since applied the same technique to the Cyrillic, Arabic, and Japanese (Kanji+Kana) alphabets, and while I can speak nothing in any of those scripts well, being able to read them is unbelievably useful - and it was purely reading signs, menus, any simple printed information, and repeating until I was reading and pronouncing, if not understanding, confidently, if not well. To be honest, large print picture books probably would have helped. The other drawback of this approach to language is that one ends up with a somewhat archaic lexicon, and some stunning mispronunciations. I am in my mid 30s and still occasionally realise that I have been saying a common word incorrectly for my entire life - “origin” is the most recent example that springs to mind.

Hyperlexia - the term first crossed my path around eight or so, and struck and strikes me yet me as odd, insofar as it doesn’t define any special characteristic other than early and persistent reading. “Curious” is perhaps a better, if broader, moniker - and I guess if there’s one thing that underpins my parents’ entire pedagogical approach it was the imbuement of wonder into the world - everything was a mystery to be solved. They usually couldn’t give me answers, as they were young and unworldly, but they would answer my questions with a Socratic “what do you think?”, which would usually prompt me into going and reading something that might shed some light, or reasoning out the answer using my extant precepts.

So... while their focus might have been almost myopically on reading, it might not have worked had I been such a willing participant, and exposed to many, many things that made my infantile mind whirl.

Don’t get me wrong, I had crappy parents, like most people - but they got something really right in my early engagement with the printed word, whether advertently or serendipitously. It even meant that when my kid sister came along, while I was seven, that they were off the hook, as I wanted to read to her, and share this incredible world of words with my sibling - and she too was devouring books at an early age, stealing dog-eared Victorian adventure novels from my shelves - and yet her early years were far less experiential than mine, growing up in sheltered British suburbia rather than the neon-lit sweat-drenched riot of crass commercialism and swineherds, both literal and figurative, that was Hong Kong. She likewise was ahead at school, is knowledgeable about the world, has forged a path less trodden - so perhaps the early reading bit remains more important than the direct environment - after all, a good book is as good as a time machine and teleporter, and can take you anywhere.

Sorry, I wasn’t trying to suggest that your parents specifically were prioritizing reading above any other goal, but only (in response to ddrdrck_) that I believe it would be possible for the vast majority of parents and kids to get a kid reading simple books by about age 3 if the parents were willing to do so.

Thanks for the elaboration. I enjoyed reading about your experience.

ddrdrck_: If you are reading to your daughter for >1 hour every day, she’s going to come out way ahead on language skills whether or not she can read by age 4 or not.

> You seem to believe that it is because your parents were reading a lot to you that you were able to read by yourself at the age of 4.

IIRC, there's evidence that (like many things) independent reading is driven by parents modelling the behavior (independent reading), rather than by parents reading to children.

Getting off topic, since I just wanted to point out that screens CAN be good, and the more research lumps all "screen time" together the less research there is into HOW they can be better.

But we didn't push it or anything - my older one was just into the endless alphabet app, and that basic desire to be an expert on something made him point it out - my younger one always to keep up with the older one. I doubt I would have forced them to do it if I wanted it as a goal - I just try to encourage them to get deep on what they're already showing an interest in at this point. And that usually just takes praising the work they put in (and not the results), and answering any questions they have.

(edit) And yeah, there's no long-term differences, as a friend said "every adult knows how to st in a toilet". I say in another comment - advancement is more a random walk than a linear progression, in adulthood as well as toddlers.

Fair enough. There’s certainly nothing wrong with knowing the alphabet.

I’m just a bit jaded and fed up with a parenting culture / education system that focuses on rushing toward specific arbitrary milestones and memorizing lots of trivia, instead of trying to immerse little humans into a culture where skills and tools are learned through practical use and competence grows slowly over time.

E.g., in a different domain, it isn’t going to especially help anything if a kid takes their first steps at 9 months, and all of those special-purpose baby walker tools are essentially useless, but the kid who has tremendous core strength/stamina because they get lots of exercise crawling all around is going to come out ahead of average even if they don’t start walking until 14 months.

Totally agree - and, generally, the adults I know who were raised this way may be super talented but have so little creativity - at music school I knew this Korean violinist who was just amazing classical player, she could tell you the pitch of the brake squeal on a subway, but watching her try to improvise was painful. There's a lot of pressure from other parents to compare kids, I think that's how that culture perpetuates at least here in the US. I just don't play that game.

(edit) This is also why I hate standardized testing which places kids is "advanced" and "normal" (implicitly slow) classes - everyone develops at their own rates, but the system implicitly assumes that early advancement rates are indicative of future advancement rates, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think the music one has to do with how she was taught music. lf she was taught from sheet music early on that can greatly impact the ability for someone to improvise. If they where taught the basic technique of the instrument and then given time to free play and figure out songs by earn /experiment they'll have much better improvisen skills.