When did you learn to read?

I remember being able to read a 'Rupert the Bear' Christmas annual before I started school. As a child, I loved to read. Pre-teen Saturday mornings were spent in the local library. Heaven!

Peasblossom

Personally I think it is the early over-emphasis on letters and sounds that is confusing and demotivating many children.

We should be concentrating first on developing confident speech. Then the child needs to understand that the spoken word can be translated into symbols. That the symbols are put together in different forms to convey meaning, like books, notices etc.

Until they understand what’s reading is all about, somebody waving a squiggle at them and going ‘b’ ‘d’ ‘e’ or whatever is totally meaningless. Very difficult to remember. And definitely not interesting.

What they experience is early failure. Then overcoming that is doubly hard.

Learning to read takes time and practice and adult support. It should be a major part of infant school. Instead the curriculum is so overstuffed that it can’t be given the time or resources it needs

absolutely this. I think what parents can do is get kids book aware...read to them, discuss books, model the use of books...and by books I mean kindles and screens generally as well as "real" books

My first few years were spent living at Grandma's with parents due to post-war housing shortage. Money was in short supply but Grandma bought some Noddy books at a jumble sale and taught me to read from them. I was a fluent reader before I started school and went to the library every Saturday to borrow as many as I could carry! I have her to thank for my passion for books (as well as her feisty genes) Funnily enough when we had our own home Mum and Dad were always on at me to play outside not sit with my nose in a book! I still read a lot but sad to say it has to compete with my online comping addiction, my favourite comps being for books. I never need to use the library due to all I have won!

I can't remember not being able to read simple words. My DD, however, wasn't interested and spent her time at school sitting at the back doing nothing, As I was working away (another story) I couldn't oversee homework etc. She did read, probably before she was seven. I can't decide whether it was laziness, or just because she could do the work and didn't see the need.
Suffice it to say she now has a science based Ph.D, and held down a responsible post- until recently made redundant.

I can remember holding the hymn book wrong way up and lala-ing in chapel (1953 or so aged 4). But Mum soon started showing me what sound letters meant, and then building words. I see now how lucky I was. I learnt with nobody having told me I was learning something - just picking it up. So, like many of us, I read somewhat before starting school (there was no room for me until I was 5 and a bit - the post war bulge). And was always given free range in the local library.

I could read before I started school, as could my daughter, I was scolded by her teacher who wasn’t happy that she could read the Peter and Jane books! Unfair on other children. My family have been very keen readers and always visited library every week.

I can only remember the joy of finding I could read. It opened up the whole world. I'm never without a book by my side fortunately neither are my children. Reading is joy

My mum used to say that I started reading when I was 2 and a half. I would read to her from my Robin comic.
My children could all read before they started school and so could my grandchildren.

I think I could read before starting school despite my parents rarely reading to me and not having many books at home. My two children were read to almost everyday from babies and had lots of books at home. My daughter could read at 4 and became an avid reader loving authors such as Roald Dahl, Julia Donaldson, Jacqueline Wilson and JK Rowling. My son struggled to read and write and was about 9 before he was a confident reader. My daughter still loves books and reads a lot but at 33 to my knowledge my son has never read a novel. He has read technical books and an occasional biography, He went to University and got a good degree but it was a good job his thesis could be typed as his handwriting is atrocious.

I spent a lot of time reading books to my children and grandchildren and minded children. Some picked it up and quicker than others, but I think that a lot of parents are inclined to stick them in front of a tv or give them their phones or iPads to play with in waiting rooms at dentist, doctors, cafes, Restuarant’s etc. I think they are sometimes embarrassed to read a book to their children in public. This in turn has meant children as they grow up will play with their phones instead of picking up a magazine or a book.

I was 6 before I learned to read. My dad had to teach me. My 1st school was in England, didn't teach me to read or do arithmetic. We moved to Scotland in May and I started school there with an exam. I had no idea what they were doing. For arithmetic I wrote the prettiest figures as the answers. After that My dad taught me reading and arithmetic, which must have worked 'cause I was 3rd in the class a year on.

I learned at infant school and can remember reading books at home at age 5.
It's not down to parental input always as I lived with foreign grandparents who were totally illiterate in English and their mother tongue. They could sign their name that's all.
One of my children had problems learning to read at age 6, as they changed from phonics to flash card method, but school had a volunteer lady who taught him phonics and he then excelled rapidly.

I learnt before school and taught my daughter before school too

In common with some earlier posters, I was able to read before going to school. I could read at the age of three, and my Grandad taught me, as he was at home due to ill health. We had books at home, and I was eager to read. Once at infant School, I helped other children to learn to read, and had my own little "reading group", of which I was quite proud! I remember having the teacher often ask me to pronounce a different or difficult word. Later, I was seen as a "teachers pet" and had few friends!

I started school one Easter, and remember very quickly learned to read. After that I read everything in the house, mostly not understanding it. So, before the summer holidays of my 5th year.

I was the first child of a stay at home mum at the end of the 50s and she taught me to read using Dick, Dora, Nip and Fluff. How I loved those books! I can see the pictures in my mind's eye even now. I was reading well by the time I went to school at 4. My sister came along 4 years later & by then, Peter & Jane were about - Ladybird books. She was reading from 3. Roll on till the mid 80s and I can't remember how old my 2 were when they learnt or what books we used! Our DGS is 7, he started learning at home before he went to school but didn't really get going until he was about 6. I was despairing but it just seemed to click one day and now at 7 he's a very competent reader & no word is too long or too complex. He's enjoying the Harry Potter books now.

I am beginning to wonder who was being taught in reception classes. So many people seem to have been reading before they started school.

But it's a mistake to think it is only reading which opens creative and imaginative doors. For many it may but there are so many other ways of accessing them. Oral communication, visual representation, physical activities all communicate and open the same doors and yet there is more and more emphasis on literacy and less and less on creativity and imagination.

All my family have always read, learning before school through absorption. It saddens me when I hear people say they don't read, reading opens up so much to us. There is a poem by Julia Donaldson that sums it up perfectly.

It troubled me to learn from our GD's teachers that many children arrive at school with no speech never mind the ability to read.... I gather I could read from the age of 3, according to friends and family. One family friend delighted in telling how I used to read the local newspaper from cover to cover. However, I have yet to get the hang, fully, of numbers. !

I also could read before I went to school, but I was lucky I was an only child, my brother turned up when I was 5 1/2, I had a stay at home mother and no tv, although we listened to plays on the radio every afternoon when I was say three and onwards. Books were, and remain, a central part of my life, but none of my children could really ‘read’ before they started school, far more interested in climbing trees and getting into mischief, although we all enjoyed working out a story each night before bed together. I think today it is very difficult to encourage ‘old fashioned’ books against all the alternatives, although one of my youngest grandsons naturally grabs a book in preference to toys and he is not yet one.

I could definitely read before I started infants school at 4 years 9 months. I went to the adjacent nursery school so that would have helped along with my mother. DS (now 36) could also read at 4 - again by going to a nursery school and at home. I read to him every evening and he wanted to see the words.
My little brother (now 56) learnt by reading thé TV pages in thé newspaper. Matching his favourite cartoons to words in thé paper.

By the end of reception I was a competent reader. My son taught himself to read by the time he was 4...mind you he was an excellent talker by the time he was one. My eldest was able to read really well at five. My youngest not so interested in reading but she could at 5. My older grandchildren all capable readers within two years of starting school. Youngest two have still to find out. When I was young you had to know all your times tables by the time you were 7. Everyone could read. I am not sure that phonics is the best way to teach reading...

I can't ever remember not reading so I think it was before I started school. My son (now 50) learnt to read very young and my grandsons also were reading well by 6. I never understood the phonetics way of teaching, it seemed unnecessary to me, the kids have to learn how the letter is pronounced and then have to learn how to read the word when they put it together so they are learning two different ways!

Like so many here, I was read to as a child and remember being fascinated by the Ladybird alphabet book before I started school so I am certain l recognised letters before school. My mother would have happily shown me how to read before I started school but l was stubborn and said l would learn at school. I was four years, nine months old when I started school and that was it. We had the Ladybird Peter and Jane books and there were twelve levels - A and B were for reading and C for writing. By the time l finished the reception class l was halfway through 8B and could more or less read and spell anything. I have always loved reading. Having said that, I was much slower at physical handwriting. I have realised as an adult that I have mild dyspraxia, which was not known about then. I had not really determined which hand to write with at five so, as was the practice of the time, l was encouraged to use my right hand. As I use my left hand for so many other things, I now wonder if I was a late developing lefty. Certainly, for a very long time, I found writing difficult and physically tiring.