Many gifted kids read before any lessons. Some highly, exceptionally, to profoundly gifted start by ages two to three. Some don’t read until later.
Many gifted kids read before any lessons. Some highly, exceptionally, to profoundly gifted (Ruf Estimates of Levels Three, Four, and Five) start by ages two to three. A child might still be gifted, though, reading a little later. And some gifted children never become avid readers, so what’s up?
Alan, the youngest of three children, loved to pass the time by printing out, with pencil on paper, the entire alphabet in order, over and over again. This started when he was younger than four years old. By the time he was five, he loved to work ahead in his reading workbooks in preschool and his mother couldn’t pull him away from his humor books by the time he was six. He had a typical little lisp, so he still sounded young when he read out loud, but he read so fluently, you thought he was just talking, not reading. His mother found a way to put his talent to use and arranged for him to be in radio ads. He thought it was so easy that he didn’t see it as work. How did Alan get to be such an early reader?
Many parents have heard that early reading means their child is gifted. It’s normal for parents to hope their children are smart because we know that higher intelligence might give our children an edge in life. But what is early reading and what does it mean for children’s success in school and in life? Is early reading natural for some children, or can we jump-start that ability and give our children an advantage that will last a lifetime?
When Early Reading May Mean Your Child Is Gifted
When a parent says his child is reading already, you need to ask what he means by this. Some mothers and fathers (and doting grandparents) mean that their child recognizes familiar signs like MacDonald’s, while some don’t think of their children as reading until they can read books silently to themselves.
Alan attended a classmate’s 5th birthday party and read all of the birthday girl’s birthday cards to her in front of the group. Later, her mother told Alan’s mother that Jessica felt bad that she couldn’t read and this was embarrassing. In reality, children almost always adapt to the different abilities among their friends and classmates. It was Jessica’s mother who felt bad.
Yes, early reading usually indicates a child is brighter than average, but a lack of early reading does not tell us the opposite — that a child is not bright or even gifted. Bright children, what I call Level One Gifted (out of five levels), can usually read simple beginner books by the time they are six years old.
But for most children, in order for this to happen, they need to see and play with letters and numbers long before that. Early reading children need grown-ups to read to them and show them the joys of reading for pleasure and information. When this happens, most highly gifted children will recognize the letters by age three, and recognize their names in print, know the alphabet, and “read” familiar signs by the time they are four.
Of course, a bright child who isn’t given this exposure may have more trouble developing reading readiness skills, but some children read without the adults in their lives seeing how it happened!
When Your Child Doesn’t Read Early, It Doesn’t Mean They Aren’t Gifted
Some smart children may show little interest in learning to read or sitting still long enough to develop reading skills. But sometimes lack of interest in an activity, or a short attention span for it, is an indication that this may not be a talent area for the child. Wise parents learn not to stress such young children by “working” with their child on skills they are not ready for or interested in practicing.
On rare occasions children have difficulty reading because of eye and vision issues. I had several client families whose children struggled with reading, dyslexia and eye tracking are both real issues that can be treated and/or worked around. I scoured the internet for a simple source of information and found this one: https://visiontherapycleveland.com/post/gifted-but-struggling
More girls than boys read early, too. Sometimes parents and educators see it as more of a sign of giftedness than it actually is. It’s important not to get too excited about your early reading girl, but she still needs more than the typical child her age when it comes to reading lessons during class time! Ask for it.
Typical guidelines for learning to read are, after all, based on what is developmentally appropriate for most children. There is nothing pushy, though, about making sure you read to your child daily, have magnetized alphabet letters on the refrigerator door to play with, and you “read” the names of familiar stores and traffic signs when you and your child are out and about. Research shows that academically successful children usually have parents (or others in their lives) who read and talk to them a lot!
Differences Between Typical and Gifted Reading Development
Most gifted children, unlike most typical learners, learn to read by what are called “contextual cues.” They generally have extensive vocabularies — and that is a hallmark of high intelligence — and they begin to read spontaneously because they recognize how sentences flow and what words are likely to come next.
Gifted and highly gifted children can usually recognize common signs, e.g., “stop,” and some other words before they are three years old, some as early as two years, and many of these children in the higher Levels of Giftedness move from reading simple children’s books by age four or five to reading anything that interests them by age six (usually a Level Three, Four or Five, also known as highly, exceptionally, or profoundly gifted). There are two primary reasons for this: one, they got the opportunity; and two, they had the natural ability within them. Such children understand what they are reading, too, so they get a head start on gathering interesting and useful knowledge compared to children who start to read later or who never show much interest in reading.
My first book, 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options (2009) goes into great detail about reading and other behaviors and milestones for a group of 75 children from the time they were born to however old they were when I finished writing the book. Their parents shared those early milestones for the book. See more: https://a.co/d/0evboRYL
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