How old were you when you first started reading?

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I was sort of reading before I entered school. I read street signs, but i would sometimes get them wrong...I remember my parents driving thorugh a "Detour" area...and it was scary because I kept thinking the signs said "Danger"
...Something clicked with me at a very early age with an alpha-bits commercial on tv that spelled out the word "horse"....it was a sort of epiphony...
My abusive first grade teacher kept jerking me around from reading group to reading group..there was something weird about my reading skills.
By six, I became really addicted to reading, and had constant huge stacks of books with me at all times....so it seems at one point, I was a voracious reader at home, but in one of the lower reading groups at school.

I'm much the same as you with regard to memories. I remember quite a lot from the ages of 4-5 onwards, but virtually nothing before then. My mother told me the age I started to read at, but it seems accurate, because I do clearly remember myself during the early days of school around the age of 5 and how very easy all the reading cards, that I was supposed to be just beginning to learn to read with, were by then.

The reading cards consisted of a short story for the child to read, followed by some questions at the end to see if they had genuinely understood what they had read. They were in boxes with the simplest at the front progressing to the most difficult at the back. I started on the ones at the back, and quickly finished those.

This was my entire junior/senior high school experience

I had never heard of the game "popcorn" until middle school, and by 12th grade, I couldn't believe kids were still playing it.

I'd always have to ask the teacher what page we were on when I got called on, because I had already read the entire thing three times by the time I got called on



We moved some time when I was 3 years old, and I have quite a lot of memories of the old house. Don't have any memories of crawling though...the oldest memory I have, I was walking already.

I was about 4 years old. My dad taught me how to read. I remember I enjoyed going to the zoo and sounding out all the neat animal names.

I was the SAME way! I STILL remember when I was in the first grade and people were reading like letter by letter, sounding it out, and I read several words ahead to try to get the intonation right. Heck, I HATE read aloud, and THAT might be why. I ALSO had a teacher that was trying to teach words I already knew. She didn't want me doing anything early, so I was BORED!

BTW I had never heard of the popcorn game. MAN, WHAT A WASTE!



Well, I WAS walking around 10-11 months, but I DO remember some crawling. I LOVED those boxes at THAT point(when I was crawling and only walking a little. Oh well, the simplicity of youth.

I learned to read when I was three years old, I taught myself by watching Sesame Street.

My Preschool and Kindergarden teachers were amazed that I was able to read fluently and was able to understand everything I was reading.

Nowdays I read at insane speeds, I was once accused by a high school teacher of not reading the material due to the fact that I read it faster than she did. I proved her wrong by answering a seried of questions about the text. She never doubted me again about my reading.

I love books so much...

Might I ask what the game "Popcorn" is?

I remember when I was about 2-3 years old. I used to draw cats with wheels as legs on the walls. Imaginative child I was.
I remember at 5 misreading 'sob' as 'bos'. Dyslexic much? I had to be put in a remedial reading class. My mum said I learned how to read really fast once I was put in that class. I just can't learn in a normal classroom.

well, the funniest thing about my first reading was, that at the beginning the words made no sense - i mean, i knew all the letters, i could form them into words, but the words were strange and hard to pronounce.... just after a moment my mum told me some VERY IMPORTANT thing:

YOU SHOULD READ FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, NOT FROM RIGHT TO LEFT...

and then suddenly everything was understandable..

I don't know how old I was when I learned. Two? I have a vague memory of learning to use the toilet and being able to read, and having to remember to stop reading to avoid messing my pants.

I remember having a cloth book entitled Baby Animals that had paired pictures and words: Sheep. Lamb. Dog. Puppy. and so forth. It had a tiny white page in the middle that said "Machine Wash Cold Tumble Dry No Bleach" and this page made me very angry because it was not the same size as the other pages, and the words made no sense to me whatsoever. I pulled at it and worried at it until it shredded away. I was three, and know this for sure because I remember picking at the laundry-instructions 'page' during an event that became an oft-repeated family story.

Later my father caught me reading Scientific American magazine and asked me to explain what the article said. I had understood it properly and he was very excited. I must have been five or six, he left early in my sixth year. When they did the big official reading-level test for school, in the second grade, I was reading at the top of their chart, 'college level.'

I would read and enjoy age-appropriate children's books, but I'd also read stuff that was really beyond my comprehension. Science I understood fine, but literature, no. I had a Hemingway fascination when I was eight or nine and it was really surreal to read them again as an adult. I remembered the patterns of words, the distinctive syncopation of Hemingway, but the actual story-contents were completely new to me.

I can do a stupid hyperlexia trick, where I read the page too fast to hear the words in my head, and then can't remember it at all until about twenty minutes later, when I remember it. Badly, as if I read it a week ago and wasn't all that interested. The sensation is unpleasant, but it's kind of nice if I'm in a hurry.

I had some issues related to this all through school as well. I remember a bit in 1st grade we were reading something (don't recall exactly what) and I had already read ahead a ways. I had to jump back when it was my turn to read a sentence aloud. I yelled that sentence at teh top of my lungs, and was really irritated when the sentence ended with an exclamation point.

Also, when I was in contemporary lit in HS, my teacher didn't like a lot of the answers on my tests, because I had already finished the book, and was to about the same point or farther in it's parallel novel. (the book was Ender's Game, parallel novel is Ender's Shadow), so I was not only answering the question, but giving info on what was going to happen, and giving all of this info from the viewpoint of two different charecters.

Same here, the only difference was that in my case, the teachers didn't mind that much. They preferred me to the ones who weren't interested and didn't even read the book at all or listen to anyone else reading until it was their turn to read. At least I knew what was going on in the story. They also said I was one of the best at reading aloud. They liked the feeling I put into my words.

I was about five, two years before I started at school. No one in my family seems to remember that they made any effort to teach me, my sis said she pointed out the letters and that I much figured out the sentences by myself. When I began the first grade, I was quite annoying, cause I didn't understand why the others was struggling to draw letters and lines. By that time I read the newspapers and could write pretty good.

One person starts reading, then whenever they get tired of reading, they yell "popcorn" and call someone else's name to read.



I don't know how many teachers knew I was reading ahead, and how many thought I was sleeping or not paying attention. I know kids always laughed when I had to ask

I don't have memories from five years ago, but I can remember me at two because I have pictures to trigger the memoreies.

Not sure but my mother once told me I'd always be carrying a book around as a child (presumably I read them as well, she was not specific!).