Do you think it matters if a child learns to read at age 4,5, or 6?

I have no studies (via mobile) but to me, reading at a young age may be one of the most important skills. From imagination, to comprehension, expanding your mind, theres nothing like a love affair with books.

Many of my friends, especially guys, were terrified of class reading in elementary. I was confident, which helped my self esteem, and it has increased my vocabulary to the point that people remark on my verbiage often. It’s helped a lot in higher education. Newspaper, yearbook, English essays, a lot of that was due to my love of reading.

Even now, when I’m really stressed, I can curl up with Dorian Grey, and forget any problems, its very centering. I’m great at reading instructions, too. A guy friend challenged me to read instructions and install a ceiling fan, mine worked, his didnt haha.

In all my testing, it was the only skill that was above average continuously.

3rd grade, 8 years old, is the decider. If, by that time, children are still not really getting the reading thing, they will likely not be readers for pleasure. But there are so many other factors involved that that rather stark assessment is only a start.

My son, who has been an avid reader since second grade, did not “decode” for most of first grade; he struggled with reading to the point of having an hour each week with a reading specialist. But half way through second grade it was like a switch got turned on and he became voracious in his book consumption. By the end of third grade he was reading at a middle school level.

My daughter picked up reading early, to the point where in Kindergarten, she would read to other kids sitting at her feet before school started. But she has never been one to prefer reading a book for recreation like her brother.

@canidmajor That’s interesting that you bring up reading for pleasure. Neither my husband or I read books for pleasure. We will look through s magazine, or I read things like fluther, which I assume doesn’t count. Both of my parents read a lot, it is one of my dad’s favorite pastimes, he always has a book. I was read to since I was a baby.

Lately, I have wondered if starting school very young (I was 4 in kindergarten) if that worked against me with learning to read, although I doubt it. I remember my kindergarten teacher trying to teach me to read, but she didn’t push when I wasn’t catching on well. In first grade learning to read was a major part of the curriculum. Not fun for me at all. By second grade I was on level though with both reading and writing.

No, I didn’t mean exclusively books, I meant reading. Reading for any reason other than to learn a specific thing for a specific reason.
Some of the studies cover the fact that it is not at all an indicator of intelligence, but an indicator of how the individual brains process information retrieval.

@canidmajor Information retrieval? Doesn’t that play a lot into IQ? My IQ is high (96th-97th percentile) but my reading comprehension isn’t great. It’s very good, but not great.

No, it doesn’t at all play a lot into IQ. For example, Mensa (and most of the other high IQ groups) have tests that are non-literary as an alternate to standard reading tests. Some are directly aural/oral, some are deductive reasoning based on non-word images. It is understood that not everyone processes written words well, but may have comprehensive skills more compatible with other methods.

@canidmajor Maybe I didn’t understand what information retrieval means. Do you mean reading comprehension?

Using information, as in recalling information and applying it, logic, spatial ability, are all part of IQ. Not knowledge per se, but the ability to learn.

Information going from one place to another. Watching TV is information retrieval. Reading, listening, etc, all information retrieval.

Oh, I thought it was retrieving information already known and applying it. Similar to memory, but not specifically knowledge, but rather more what would be classified as logic and ability to learn. Ok, thanks. As far as comprehension mine is very strong when it’s auditory or visual, it’s just the reading that I don’t enjoy, and don’t do as well as the others.

The sooner the better, if the child is willing.

@canidmajor I don’t think I read for pleasure. I would never classify it that way. I enjoy fluther, but it’s because it’s like a conversation and I learn things.

Relevant.

@raum Thanks for the link! I skimmed the first few pages sad the statistics are staggering to me. I’ll read it more thoroughly when I’m on my computer, it’s too difficult in my phone.

I don’t really question the third grade correlations they are finding. When the woman I was talking to told me that information I found it interesting, but not relevant to what I was saying, but rather changing the subject. Finland starts school at ages 6 or 7, and in the US many children started school at age 6 back in the day, and the children learned to read. Some of these children maybe are reading before they enter school, but some not so much. I feel like when the brain is ready it can learn the subject at hand better and faster. I was 5, and most of my classmates were 6 when they learned. I know some kids who were reading in kindergarten so they were 5 also. I had a neighbor who was reading before he was 4, he just took to it, and his parents were very on top of teaching him. My point was 4,5,6, by age 8 I think most kids are on a similar level.

I do think it’s very important for children who are “ahead” to be allowed access to flourish and excel at the skill, whatever the skill is.

My ex boyfriend learned to read in 5th grade. He caught up quickly being on level I guess by high school. I know he passed the proficiency tests required to get into high school and to graduate. He was never a great student. He enjoyed reading; sometimes we would read aloud to each other a book he was assigned. I don’t know if he reads for pleasure now.

I agree.

In the US, when kids enter kinder, there’s usually a wide discrepancy in what they are able to do. I find that baseline/incoming skill levels have more to do with parent income at that point. By the time they hit third grade, most are on a more level field. It’s easier to spot the ones that are really struggling versus the ones whose parents didn’t have enough money to put them into a private preschool.

@JLeslie Reading for pleasure is one of my favorite past times. It’s fun to read for educational value, but you throw me a book like Where the Crawdads Sing, and it’s hard to put down, it’s so entertaining. And relaxing. Maybe time to try again, just see if you find it enjoyable now.

A child will go at his or her own pace, but introducing them to libraries and there programs will make it a fun experience at an early age.
If they are made to feel inferior etc it would become that much harder to teach them.
Make it a fun experience and they will prosper.
It helps a lot if the parents had reading instilled in there lives as well. (good interesting books).
Even reading them a story at bedtime and letting them go through the pages and pointing to the words goes a long way.

I didn’t start reading until the fourth grade. I flunked the second grade and should have flunked the third grade. My fourth grade teacher Mrs. Butler crack the whip on me and told me that I have to come in to School ½ hour early each day and learn to read.

By junior high I caught up with the average student. In high school I could get any grade that I wanted,

Graduated from college with a BA and spent 38 years working in clinical labs as a Medical Technogist.

You are one of the exceptions. I am so happy for you that you got early help from a teacher who cared.

@gondwanalon Would you say you read for pleasure? I notice you went into the sciences, not law or literature.

I feel like there is this big worry about a lack of STEM talent in our country, but I also think there is a huge emphasis on reading, and less of an understanding of how the math and science brain work in young children. There is a percentage of kids who are slower to pick up reading, but they excel at math. They eventually catch up in reading, but it’s important to not let those kids slip through the cracks. I also assume (assumptions can be wrong) that most of the people high up in the K-12 ivory towers are not math and science people. More than that, I think most of them probably enjoyed school.

Were your parents literate in English? Did they know you were struggling?

My parents always read to me, and I grew up going to the library and going to library reading time where an adult read us books aloud. I remember my mom helping me to read in first grade. I know it really tested her patience.

@KNOWITALL I try now and then. I even joined a book club st one point. It all feels like homework to me. Not just the book club, I mean in general. I don’t enjoy it.

I had no adult supervision at home. My father died when I was 4. My mother was always working or sleeping. My two older sisters tried to take care of me. But it was pandemonium and I had no discipline or direction. I was lazy and didn’t care about anything.

My father was a dentist and my mother graduated from high school. Mom never read to me. From kindergarten on I cleaned and dressed myself. And I did a poor job of it.

One evening my mom went to talk to my 4th grade teacher (Mrs Butler). It was some sort of parent teacher night. While there my mom talked to the music teacher. They asked me if I would like to play the trumpet. I said OK.

That trumpet was the first thing that I ever cared about. I practiced every day after school and quickly started reading music. I was hooked on it.

Mrs. Butler told me that I can forget about playing that trumpet if I don’t learn to read. I surprised her and myself how quickly I started reading.

From then on I was a good kid and worked hard in school.

FYI: I played the trumpet though junior high, high school and 4 years of college. Auditioned for and was accepted to play trumpet in the US Army band.

@gondwanalon Amazing how one pivotal decision can mean so much. Thank goodness your mom was receptive to offering you the chance at playing the trumpet. It sounds to me like your teachers saw how fabulous you were through your mismatched clothing, being behind at reading, and what you refer to as being lazy. You easily could have been ignored by teachers and left behind. That’s one worry I have with ideas like not learning to read by 3rd grade means the child has no hope for a future. I know so many stories similar to yours where the person wound up doing very well.

I was a child prodigy and taught myself to read and write at the age of two from comic books. I also have strong memories of crawling around on the floor, pooping my rubber pants, sucking on my pacifier, and jumping up and down in my crib dating all the way back to the age of six months. I think these two facts are connected.

It’s believed that we all have memories reaching back to birth and possibly beyond, but that they are inaccessible because the way the brain stores memories changes when we learn language. As a prodigy with precocious language skills, I think I can remember much farther back than most people because my brain had installed its linguistic operating system so early.

Given this, I think it’s highly likely that the age at which one acquires language matters very much in the development of other intellectual capacities. In Chomsky’s seminal Syntactic Structures, he describes the way the mind creates overlapping clouds of meaning around words, with more concrete meanings towards the centre and more abstract meanings around the edges, where they often overlap with other words and concepts. Given that so much of our cognition is linguistic, it’s unsurprising that overall intelligence might be affected by our development of language skills.

Julian Jaynes, incidentally, notes that the corpus colossum is not, as commonly believed, the only connection between the two lobes of the brain. The two language centres are also connected by a thin bundle of neurons, and Jaynes argues that language in general and words specifically are actually part of the mechanics of brain function, as they form a neat way of compressing complex thoughts into small bundles capable of being transmitted across the gap between language centres, and the reason (he argues) that we experience the gods as audible voices speaking to us.

@SmashTheState It makes sense to me that language skills might help with memory. My BIL has memories back to the age of 2 years old, I’ll have to find out if he spoke early also. I doubt he was reading very young, but I don’t know. My husband and his siblings started English class at age 4, and two languages typically slightly slows language learning. My husband was later than his siblings at forming sentences, but it’s been chalked up to him being the youngest and the other children speaking for him. I don’t think he was technically outside of the norm though.

My earliest memory is at the age of 3, I remember my mom putting my sister in the crib and asking why the pillow was under the mattress, and my mom explaining to me why. I remember where the crib was in the room when otherwise my memory of that room is when I was older and the crib was gone and there were shelves with toys in that same spot.

My dad taught himself to read with comic books also! He was in 3rd grade. I’m thinking he had very few reading materials in his house, his family was extremely poor, not educated, I’m guessing primary school at most, and his father was mentally ill and slightly hard of hearing, and from what I understand my grandmother was not very smart. My dad hated school as a little kid. He went on to excel in school, and wound up in an accelerated program.

One thing I’ve noticed is children who move tend to lose their memory from when they were very young. Especially, children adopted before age 8. Even at 7 years old, if they have a drastic change where there aren’t reminders of their previous house and daily life, they seem to lose more of that time than children who live in the same place through many years. I think the redundancy helps to connect the memories in a way that they are easily retrieved. Especially, if the child is in a new language, maybe even more is lost.