When did you learn to read?

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. !

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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 learnt before school and taught my daughter before school too

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 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 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 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.

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 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

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 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 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.

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!

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

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!

I learnt at 5 but as I later went on to gain 10 O levels so that was delayed for me. Now I know I am dyslexic so it took longer than it should have done.

My DS did not read before he was 9 but then soon caught up and went to Cambridge. He is also dyslexic. So keep encouraging and do not give the impression that a child is slow, stupid or (Heaven forbid) has problems. We are all different with different abilities and blind spots.

At the time my DS was at primary school, children 'had' to learn the look and say with NO phonics, hence the delay. As I have no visual memory and passed that on, ( I still walk past my DH if I meet him unexpectedly, as I don't recognise him. I have also accosted strangers - embarrassing.) I cannot retain pictures, so letters & words escape recognition and I am a terrible speller. The repeated correcting 'spellings' at the end of every piece of writing, did improve my muscle memory which is what I depend on now.

As a teacher I have always relied on the good spellers in my classes to correct my board work, which does encourage cooperation, and helps encourage questioning by those who don't understand first time, when mastering new ideas.

I took my grandchildren to the library every Saturday from toddlers. 26 24 19 and 14 now.
Reading to one of them one day she took the book and said 'I'll do it nanny' then studied the page and said 'Oh how do you do it?,' she was 2 and a half .

I learnt to read at primary school.l was 7 when it clicked and l could manage the famous 5 books, what a joy! Been an avid reader ever since.l read to my grandchildren as l did with their mothers,but it took longer for them to learn with the phonics alphabet than how l learnt.

I was late in learning to read - I remember being taken into a small group when I was 6-7 because I was behind the rest of the class. Why? I had lots of books - but we lived with my paternal grandparents, and Nanny always had time to read to me. Why would I make the effort to learn when someone was always there to do it for me..?? ?
Then I learned - and haven't stopped since...? But I can still remember cuddling up in Nanny and Grandad's bed, listening to her gentle voice reading Mary Mouse to me (again)...?

I went to school in Germany, where you star between 6th and 7th birthday. My brother was a year younger than me, so parents decided to send us together. No reading had been taught or encouraged in the home. So I was 7 when I started, in a class of 40. Quite common then, class size I mean, but a lot of countries still don't start school until children are 6 or 7. It causes no problems whatsoever, and everybody learns foreign languages, English, French and Latin in my case, no other options at the time.
I have read that teaching reading too early can cause anxiety which can lead to dyslexia. Every child is different, and if reading is encouraged in the home, there is nothing wrong with that. I do believe, though, that forcing children too early is wrong, particularly if no allowance is made for premature babies.