Learning To Read & Early Childhood Reading

[Cochise]

Wasn't sure where to put this.

There has recently been some stuff published in the newspapers about not being able to remember anything from ones early childhood. As with all such sweeping statements, my response would be 'it depends'. I distinctly remember my first dog, who was run over when I was 4. (Name of 'Fella' lab/collie cross)

But perhaps more relevant, I learned to read at a stupidly early age, so early that I can't remeber not being able to read. I think I was taught by the nurses during my extended stays in hospital, which I also barely remember. (Apart from a red crane I used to play with). (I had something like 12 eye operations before I was 5)

Now to what caused me to post. The first supernatural thing I can remember reading about was a brown shapeless entity that haunted Sutton Road in Southend. This was reported in the Southend Standard newspaper, which I was reading at about age 5 . I could read newspapers before I went to primary school - and as evidence I still have children's novels I was given at that age - Jennings, that sort of stuff. You can tell the ones I had early because I had a tendency to chew the corners of the pages .

So, two things - can anyone else remember reading very early, and can anyone point me at any information regarding the Southend-on-Sea brown entity?

 

[Ringo]

Not me personally but my maternal Grandmother could read the bible at age 4. She would often be left at home alone in those days for short periods of time (not sure if that was normal in the '20's.) while her Mum popped to the shop or what have you. She would read the bible when she got afraid. I think I recall a story of her being at home alone in their flat and it was night /evening. It was very dark inside and she either wasn't allowed to or couldn't light a fire or lamp. She was scared so she went out and sat on the downstairs doorstep where there was just enough light for her to read her bible.

 

[Ermintruder]

I am absolutely-certain that I could read before going to school, and was reading at about the age of four. I went from Beatrix Potter and The Broons (at home) to ABC books at school. I thought the reason for me being re-taught reading at school was so I could collect the coloured sticky stars in my jotter pages.

At that age, my interpretation of The Reason For School was that it was simply a place where you could impossibly-fun things. Such as constantly-sharpen pencils, with the bench winders. Or use weighing scales, which were an endless source of fascination. And to slide about on the lino or polished wooden floors like an indoor skater.

To a close approximation, all I learnt from seven years at primary school was how do long division, and the names of all the books of the bible.

Everything else I learnt in my own time, from library books, signs/posters/stuff in general, magazines and newspapers, almost always before being formally-told about it at school.

And I also learned very early on that it was a Bad Idea to be seen to know the answers in class. It upset the teachers, and it meant that taller hard-of-thinking people tended to kick/nip you.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Misread the title as Reading and ghosts, and was going to suggest the abbey ruins, museum and Thames-side walk as the most likely spots for ghosts.

 

[Cochise]

I am absolutely-certain that I could read before going to school, and was reading at about the age of four. I went from Beatrix Potter and The Broons (at home) to ABC books at school. I thought the reason for me being re-taught reading at school was so I could collect the coloured sticky stars in my jotter pages.

At that age, my interpretation of The Reason For School was that it was simply a place where you could impossibly-fun things. Such as constantly-sharpen pencils, with the bench winders. Or use weighing scales, which were an endless source of fascination. And to slide about on the lino or polished wooden floors like an indoor skater.

To a close approximation, all I learnt from seven years at primary school was how do long division, and the names of all the books of the bible.

Everything else I learnt in my own time, from library books, signs/posters/stuff in general, magazines and newspapers, almost always before being formally-told about it at school.

And I also learned very early on that it was a Bad Idea to be seen to know the answers in class. It upset the teachers, and it meant that taller hard-of-thinking people tended to kick/nip you.

Yes, I learned long division and multiplication. That was it, really, until about third year of Senior school when a History teacher managed to get my interest. He realised that conventional school learning didn't work with me , and used to send me off to the municipal library to research things - about a mile and quarter walk, unsupervised. He'd probably be hung drawn and quartered by the safety police now.

 

[GerdaWordyer]

I did not read early, but I learned to read rapidly. From learning the alphabet and a few phonics at age six I could read at the level of an 11-year-old in a couple of months. Reading just clicked for me then. And it was fun.
My husband hard a hard time--he finally learned over a summer when his mom worked with him with phonics records and books.
I really wanted to read before attending school--I'd pore over word bubbles in comic books and Mad magazines--so frustrating.
So, Forteans, how did reading "click" with you?

 

[JamesWhitehead]

I was another early-reader and must have been taught phonics, probably by my maternal grandmother, possibly by my mother, though I have no memory of either of them sitting with me for detailed instruction. It must have happened, however, since at infant school, I was singled out to go and read to the headmaster in his office. He had some standard word-lists to establish "reading-age" and kept skipping through pages till I started to stumble. He announced that I was two or three years ahead of what was expected. I would have been four, as the first year - I started school at three - was given over to play mainly. The head, I recall, quizzed me on how many of the difficult words I understood the meaning of; my ability to read and pronounce them was running some way ahead of knowing their meanings. It strongly indicates that I was taught to break down words into phonic chunks and recognized familiar letter combinations.

My brother followed me to the same school three years later, where he encountered the unlamented ITA - Initial Teaching Alphabet - which introduced phonetic symbols which do not occur in standard English texts. It may have impeded his progress with reading at a crucial stage, as he was a much less enthusiastic reader.

Of course, precocious reading-skills did not mean I was all that advanced cognitively. My class teacher, alerted to challenge me, suggested that I put aside Doctor Seuss and tried to interest me in a musty, old volume of Aesop's Fables. I remember that this was lacking a cover and had been in a box of stuff destined for the tip. I was baffled by the fables. Just as I was getting interested in the Hare and the Tortoise, the tale would fizzle out with a moral in italics; the next page jumped to an old woman sniffing a bottle*. I took the book to the teacher and whinged that there must be some pages missing from this depressing tome. I was given Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, which I found weird but fascinating. I think that one has long since gone to the tip!

*The moral of this one was "the memory of what is good lingers." Or "old women should not do Amyl Nitrate," one or the other. I was later given a handsome, illustrated edition of Aesop and loved it, learning many almost by heart, together with their didactic little morals. :rup:

 

[escargot]

I can't remember ever learning to read. Was streets ahead of every other child of my age in no time. Did me no good as everyone was supposed to learn at the same rate so my progress exasperated the teachers.

 

[chicorea]

My mother used to tell the story about me, being 1 year and a half, going out with her for a walk on the center of the city. Suddenly I call her attention, pointing to top of a building. "Look! Pirelli!" My mother almost fainted, once on the top of the building she saw a huge Pirelli outdoor (it was the early 1960s). Then she realised that, without reading, I could recognize brands advertised on TV, associating the logo to the name I heard. So, it's possible that, besides the letters on the alphabet, there is also the reading "by context", where symbols (sigils?) play a role of hieroglyphs, forming a tandem of form and sound. And this before the formal learning process.

By the way, my mother was a elementary teacher and I learned to read and write with her, before I arrived to school.

 

[Krepostnoi]

I don't remember learning to read, although logic suggests I must have done at some stage. But I don't remember a time when I could not. I was a voracious reader as a child, right down to the cliche of reading the labels on the sauce bottles at tea-time. I know for a fact that the first time I came across the word tamarind was on the label of a bottle of HP Fruity Sauce. For some reason, ordinary brown sauce didn't quite hit the spot for my parents,

My memory does suggest that I read my formative Fortean text - Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World - while I was still at first school (I was born in 1973, and according to Wikipedia the series first screened in 1980, so the dates are about right...) and I do remember causing my dad some perplexity when I asked him what "menstruating" meant. (According to the book, yetis are attracted to menstruating women.) It staggers me how much of an impression that book had on me - there was, for example, a particular typo that means I still cannot accept thylacine as the correct spelling - in my view, the l and the y should be transposed.

We had hardback copies of that and Life on Earth, and for some reason in my mind the two are linked - did we get them as a special offer, or something? Anyway, I also read the latter from cover to cover, although I was troubled by the big colour plate of a tarantula that opened one of the chapters, but I don't have anything like the same recall of that book.

 

[GNC]

I could read pre-school, so about 4, starting to get my literacy together at 3 perhaps? Once I could do it, I couldn't get enough of reading, so much that I would even read the captions of Winker Watson in The Dandy (which were truly superfluous I would quickly realise - but they were words to be understood). Fortunately I had excellent teachers at my primary school who could give me books that would help me along in my comprehension, so here I am decades later still with the reading bug.

 

[Zeke Newbold]

Misread the title as Reading and ghosts, and was going to suggest the abbey ruins, museum and Thames-side walk as the most likely spots for ghosts.

A bit off topic this, but that reminds me of an anecdote concerning the poet John Betjeman. Apart from wanting bombs to fall on Slough, he was actually rather fond of middling provincial English towns - one of them being Reading.

So one day he gave an advertised public talk entitled `The Joy of Reading` - and a lot of the audience were disappointed as they had expected a summation of the pleasures of appreciating literature!

Anyway, the first novel I remember reading was a novelisation of the TV show `The Tommorow People` at around the age 7/8. I was doomed from that day forth.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

Wasn't sure where to put this.

There has recently been some stuff published in the newspapers about not being able to remember anything from ones early childhood. As with all such sweeping statements, my response would be 'it depends'. I distinctly remember my first dog, who was run over when I was 4. (Name of 'Fella' lab/collie cross)

But perhaps more relevant, I learned to read at a stupidly early age, so early that I can't remeber not being able to read. I think I was taught by the nurses during my extended stays in hospital, which I also barely remember. (Apart from a red crane I used to play with). (I had something like 12 eye operations before I was 5)

Now to what caused me to post. The first supernatural thing I can remember reading about was a brown shapeless entity that haunted Sutton Road in Southend. This was reported in the Southend Standard newspaper, which I was reading at about age 5 . I could read newspapers before I went to primary school - and as evidence I still have children's novels I was given at that age - Jennings, that sort of stuff. You can tell the ones I had early because I had a tendency to chew the corners of the pages .

So, two things - can anyone else remember reading very early, and can anyone point me at any information regarding the Southend-on-Sea brown entity?

I read from around age 4. Old lady two doors down used to 'teach' me. She'd get the newspaper and sit and read it with me, and my parents said if I learned to read, they'd buy me a comic every week. So I learned fast. I learned by reading newspapers, and then comics.

We had a new school built in the village when I was about 7 and we moved over from the old to the new, getting some teachers from the old boys' and old girls' schools which had been in the village, before the new Mixed Infants & Jrs was built. My new teacher was a lovely bloke from the boys' school who was near retirement age and very posh, like a public school teacher. I adored him. He tried to put me on the Ladybird reading scheme but I told him I could already read. He said "OK then. Read the entire scheme from start to end in one morning and I will never make you read one of these deadly boring things ever again!" I did, and he kept his word. I was the only kid who didn't have to do reading books!

ETA: One of my kids had bad dyspraxia/dyslexia and he couldn't speak intelligbly til he was five. One day, when he was just 5 so he was still struggling to speak in sentences, we were walking round a supermarket and he started reading the labels out loud. We had no idea where it came from. Especially as he had language problems, already. But he could read fluently within a couple of months of that.

 

[escargot]

I read from around age 4. Old lady two doors down used to 'teach' me. She'd get the newspaper and sit and read it with me, and my parents said if I learned to read, they'd buy me a comic every week. So I learned fast. I learned by reading newspapers, and then comics.

We had a new school built in the village when I was about 7 and we moved over from the old to the new, getting some teachers from the old boys' and old girls' schools which had been in the village, before the new Mixed Infants & Jrs was built. My new teacher was a lovely bloke from the boys' school who was near retirement age and very posh, like a public school teacher. I adored him. He tried to put me on the Ladybird reading scheme but I told him I could already read. He said "OK then. Read the entire scheme from start to end in one morning and I will never make you read one of these deadly boring things ever again!" I did, and he kept his word. I was the only kid who didn't have to do reading books!

ETA: One of my kids had bad dyspraxia/dyslexia and he couldn't speak intelligbly til he was five. One day, when he was just 5 so he was still struggling to speak in sentences, we were walking round a supermarket and he started reading the labels out loud. We had no idea where it came from. Especially as he had language problems, already. But he could read fluently within a couple of months of that.

We had the dreaded reading schemes too, along with other rigid systems. I would furtively read the whole set along with everything else available and then forget which one I was supposed to be on.

Our teacher's method was to have each kid read a word aloud in the sentence along the line of desks so I'd count out which 'my' word was and then read the rest of the book and whatever else I could hold on my lap under the desk lid, blurting out the word when I noticed a silence and people staring at me...
Everyone was supposed to be on the same stage and there was no provision for children who weren't.

When my kids were learning to read in infant school, or rather they were demonstrating how well they could already read, they were shunted up the reading schemes and soon became 'free readers', choosing their own books.

By then the National Curriculum was coming in along with SATs so again, spontaneous reading was supposed to be discouraged. It went full circle.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

A bit off topic this, but that reminds me of an anecdote concerning the poet John Betjeman. Apart from wanting bombs to fall on Slough, he was actually rather fond of middling provincial English towns - one of them being Reading.

So one day he gave an advertised public talk entitled `The Joy of Reading` - and a lot of the audience were disappointed as they had expected a summation of the pleasures of appreciating literature!

Anyway, the first novel I remember reading was a novelisation of the TV show `The Tommorow People` at around the age 7/8. I was doomed from that day forth.

Silly thing is that, on older maps, the town name is spelt phonetically as "Redding" (and Berkshire was spelt "Barkshire").
I'm not sure when the confusing modern spelling became the norm.

 

[escargot]

Silly thing is that, on older maps, the town name is spelt phonetically as "Redding" (and Berkshire was spelt "Barkshire").
I'm not sure when the confusing modern spelling became the norm.

View attachment 13988

Ooooh, oooooh, phonetically-spelled place names, eh! Get thee to the Annoying Words thread with it!

 

[catseye]

I don't remember learning to read - probably before I went to school, but I do remember teaching my eldest son to read. We had a collection of 'Learn to Read' books and he was keen - I always remember him reading out a 'Wet Paint' sign (I don't remember how old he was though!). The big surprise came when it was apparent that his 18 month younger sister had been listening in to his reading sessions, and, aged under three had worked her way through all his books.

She's a writer now, unsurprisingly.

 

[escargot]

I don't remember learning to read - probably before I went to school, but I do remember teaching my eldest son to read. We had a collection of 'Learn to Read' books and he was keen - I always remember him reading out a 'Wet Paint' sign (I don't remember how old he was though!). The big surprise came when it was apparent that his 18 month younger sister had been listening in to his reading sessions, and, aged under three had worked her way through all his books.

She's a writer now, unsurprisingly.

Kids who are exposed to text can't help picking it up. Can remember being in a shop with one of mine when he was a tiny toddler and seeing him spontaneously point to and name all the letters on the front of the counter - REFRIGERATED DISPLAY'.

He could barely talk at the time, in fact he'd been so slow to talk we'd been worried about him.

Another who was read 'Cat in the Hat' books recognised a stop sign on a car park and shouted STOP! at the top of her voice, as that's how it was said in her favourite story! I did of course STOP dead and nearly cause a low-speed collision.

 

[Schrodinger's Zebra]

I could read at the age of 3, but I don't actually remember reading back then as such. I wish I could remember!

I remember the sort of books I read (Famous Five, Mallory Towers, that sort of Enid Blyton stuff) but I couldn't tell you what age I read those.

I must have also learned to write before starting primary school because I remember the teacher telling me that I had to learn to write "their" way and not the way I'd been taught at home.

Nowadays, I'm an extremely fast reader. I can read a book in one sitting. Whether that had anything to do with my early reading I can't say.

I have memories that I know are from before I started primary school (i.e. before I was 5). For example I remember the damn "household sounds" or whatever name was given to that LP-from-hell which terrified the living daylights out of me thanks to the "hoover" sound on it. (If anyone knows of this LP so I can hunt down whoever made it, let me know).

 

[AnonyJ]

My earliest memory is being 2, almost 3 years old (the reason I can date it so well is that my mum was pregnant with my younger sister). I can't remember being specifically taught to read apart from being read to, but I remember reading itself. My auntie still tells a funny story regarding me being a reading prodigy, and now I know I was 'hyperlexic'.

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...ou-onto-the-fortean.46756/page-5#post-1962998

Wonderful! Now I kind of have an answer, I had no idea at all that early reading ability (I could read from learning from my Dad reading to me when I was 3) was linked to some other traits. I also have a speech disorder. In the 'types' mentioned I am a #3 and #1 respectively. I was just thought of as a fairly well-behaved child who like reading and didn't always want to play with large groups. Thank you!

My Aunt tells a story occasionally of when my older cousin had just started school and was struggling with words and I opened a book of birds and said "that says Cassowary, [name]"!

Similar to @tuco above, my primary school teacher refused to believe I could read when I arrived at 5 years old until I read all of Peter & Jane #1 to her and asked if I could go back to reading my Childcraft Encyclopedias (1973 edition). They were brilliant and still are, still have them

View attachment 26172

By the age of 6 I was let off conventional 'reading books' and allowed to choose a book to take home from the primary school library every day if I wanted, by 8-9 I had a reading age of 13-14 and the scale they used ended there. That's not to say I understood all I read but I still kept avidly reading.

 

[gordonrutter]

My earliest memory is being 2, almost 3 years old (the reason I can date it so well is that my mum was pregnant with my younger sister). I can't remember being specifically taught to read apart from being read to, but I remember reading itself. My auntie still tells a funny story regarding me being a reading prodigy, and now I know I was 'hyperlexic'.

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...ou-onto-the-fortean.46756/page-5#post-1962998



By the age of 6 I was let off conventional 'reading books' and allowed to choose a book to take home from the primary school library every day if I wanted, by 8-9 I had a reading age of 13-14 and the scale they used ended there. That's not to say I understood all I read but I still kept avidly reading.

By my own recollection I was a slow starter to reading but quickly made up for it. Like yourself AnonyJoolz I had a high reading age in primary school and read everything I could. Fairly rapidly I was allowed to borrow books from the adults section of the local library, the staff saw an interest and they helped nurture it.

 

[Ger]

Wasn't sure where to put this.

There has recently been some stuff published in the newspapers about not being able to remember anything from ones early childhood. As with all such sweeping statements, my response would be 'it depends'. I distinctly remember my first dog, who was run over when I was 4. (Name of 'Fella' lab/collie cross)

But perhaps more relevant, I learned to read at a stupidly early age, so early that I can't remeber not being able to read. I think I was taught by the nurses during my extended stays in hospital, which I also barely remember. (Apart from a red crane I used to play with). (I had something like 12 eye operations before I was 5)

Now to what caused me to post. The first supernatural thing I can remember reading about was a brown shapeless entity that haunted Sutton Road in Southend. This was reported in the Southend Standard newspaper, which I was reading at about age 5 . I could read newspapers before I went to primary school - and as evidence I still have children's novels I was given at that age - Jennings, that sort of stuff. You can tell the ones I had early because I had a tendency to chew the corners of the pages .

So, two things - can anyone else remember reading very early, and can anyone point me at any information regarding the Southend-on-Sea brown entity?

Sorry, know this is an old post. I read at about 3 -4 I believe. I was read to / with a lot. I distinctly remember being able to read before starting school ( Sure all 4 of us did )...However I WOULD NOT READ OUT LOUD TO THE TEACHER when I did start school ... as I was worried I might make a mistake. I can remember that as clearly as anything. I would have been SO embarrassed... I also remember soon after starting that some children had "accidents" ie, didn't get to the loo on time... I was absolutely mortified on their behalf...I hadn't realized it was a thing that happened at school ! Lol.

 

[ralfy]

In kindergarten, using a "See Spot run" book and a short ruler. Before that were probably flash cards.

 

[escargot]

Misread the title as Reading and ghosts, and was going to suggest the abbey ruins, museum and Thames-side walk as the most likely spots for ghosts.

It did say that. 'Reading and ghosts'.

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

I could read at the age of 3, but I don't actually remember reading back then as such. I wish I could remember!

I remember the sort of books I read (Famous Five, Mallory Towers, that sort of Enid Blyton stuff) but I couldn't tell you what age I read those.

I must have also learned to write before starting primary school because I remember the teacher telling me that I had to learn to write "their" way and not the way I'd been taught at home.

Nowadays, I'm an extremely fast reader. I can read a book in one sitting. Whether that had anything to do with my early reading I can't say.

I have memories that I know are from before I started primary school (i.e. before I was 5). For example I remember the damn "household sounds" or whatever name was given to that LP-from-hell which terrified the living daylights out of me thanks to the "hoover" sound on it. (If anyone knows of this LP so I can hunt down whoever made it, let me know).

This has a hoover on it?

There are a few different pressings though so the one you had might have a different cover https://www.discogs.com/No-Artist-Sound-Effects-No-2/master/313327

 

[Gloucestrian]

I could read at an early age. Also this business of not being able to remember really early stuff, well I very clearly remember when my mother and I found an abandoned kitten on Christmas Eve.

He was in a brown cardboard box in a public telephone box. I remember being distressed that he was abandoned, it was cold, and my mother said we should check in a nearby shop, an off-license, to see if anyone knew anything about it. We went in there and she asked the woman working in there about it, she didn't know anything about the kitten and we decided to take the kitten home with us and return and put a note in the telephone box just in case. I remember my mum writing out that note and taping it up in the telephone box window. I remember all this clearly.

We have always kept records about when and where we got each pet, and when they died and what from, etc. I was slightly surprised recently when adding a new pet into this record book because I noticed the date when we took in this abandoned kitten. I was about 1 and a half years old. I remember other things from around that time, things that were on the news (I was a voracious consumer of news as a young child) so it makes sense, but I would have said it happened a year later than it did. Nevertheless that would have still been an unusually early memory according to most experts.

Most individuals on both sides of my family have very good memory so I imagine that there is a genetic factor at play but I certainly don't agree with the common assertion that people can't remember things much before 3 years old.

 

[Patrick30]

My grandfather babysat me every day while my Mom and Dad both worked. I can remember him teaching me to read from the comics and Br’er Rabbit. I was way ahead of the game entering first grade. My peers were reading Dick and Jane while I read stuff about dinosaurs.

 

[Aurora Newman]

Wasn't sure where to put this.

There has recently been some stuff published in the newspapers about not being able to remember anything from ones early childhood. As with all such sweeping statements, my response would be 'it depends'. I distinctly remember my first dog, who was run over when I was 4. (Name of 'Fella' lab/collie cross)

But perhaps more relevant, I learned to read at a stupidly early age, so early that I can't remeber not being able to read. I think I was taught by the nurses during my extended stays in hospital, which I also barely remember. (Apart from a red crane I used to play with). (I had something like 12 eye operations before I was 5)

Now to what caused me to post. The first supernatural thing I can remember reading about was a brown shapeless entity that haunted Sutton Road in Southend. This was reported in the Southend Standard newspaper, which I was reading at about age 5 . I could read newspapers before I went to primary school - and as evidence I still have children's novels I was given at that age - Jennings, that sort of stuff. You can tell the ones I had early because I had a tendency to chew the corners of the pages .

So, two things - can anyone else remember reading very early, and can anyone point me at any information regarding the Southend-on-Sea brown entity?

https://paranormaldatabase.com/hotspots/southend.php

The Southern Standard records online only go back to 1995

 

[MercuryCrest]

I'm from a family of authors, so reading was encouraged at an early age. Reading-wise, I was always 4-5 grades ahead of my class. (Yes, my math sucked. Why do you ask? )

I remember the very first book I learned to read: There's a Nightmare in my Closet, by Mercer Meyer. I was okay until the last page, where a different "Nightmare" shows up. That damned thing terrified me. It's a wonder that I didn't stop reading after that. (NSFL Warning, it's the second picture down: https://www.kindertrauma.com/traumafession-grayson-k-on-theres-a-nightmare-in-my-closet/

That being said, (for anyone in the states who remembers this) I got many, many personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut for being in the Book-It Club.

Later on, well, there were these gumball machines at the local supermarket and many had these dumb little locks for $.25. I had a bunch. Realizing that this creature at the end of the book could possibly get out, I borrowed my mother's hole punch, made a bunch of holes around the outside edges, put all the locks I had on it, then hid it in the back of her closet.

 

[Fanari_Lloyd]

My nan was headmistress of a little village school, and my mum (for a time) taught the younger age group there (while Nan taught the older group). Mum took me into school with her when I was about 18 months old and I learned to read incredibly young, too. I have a vague memory of her teaching other children (older than me) to read, with me sitting on her lap and absorbing the words and letters.

She would teach individually, rather than the class all at once, as some children needed more time and patience than others, but I was always there. I became a book-worm very young (and still am) but apart from that memory, I don‘t remember actually learning to read.