Funnily enough, though, Michael didn’t really start reading until this year. He was categorized as gifted with his main bag being verbal development but couldn’t read his way out of a wet paper bag. When the invariable nosy relatives asked about him, we said he was too busy talking to read. Then eight happened and Holy Moly! Harry Potter, Spiderwick, Lemony Snicket, blogs, Guinness, Wikipedia… if it’s written, he’s reading it.

We figured out that between Christmas gifts and stuff bought with Michael’s Christmas money, the boys got 50 books between them this holiday season. I’m sure that far off in the future, when they’re both seeing therapists about their lack of normalization in society, this Christmas will feature heavily in their discussions.

Robert

@Milander: I’m pretty familiar with the implications of the curve. Did all the educational stats classes in college. Sooooo much fun. The difficulties that the older boys have had are real, although not dramatic enough that I ever mentioned them to a doc. My own background, education and experience w/ learning difficulties, etc. has been the basis of evaluation. The younger boys are quite a bit different, have learned faster and more intuitively and I’ve made much less effort to teach them anything after all the struggles with the older boys.

What I have found is that if I directly explain something very concretely to them, they do fine. I frequently stop when I’m talking to them and ask “do you know what that means?” if I’ve used an abstract word. They’ve learned to trust me enough to tell me if they don’t know it (and 80% of the time they don’t), so I explain it in concrete terms and we continue. The more that I’ve done that, the more I can see them making connections…almost building little maps in their heads and connecting the dots between tidbits of information. It’s increasing faster and faster, which I find thrilling. I remain convinced that at least one of the older boys would have been diagnosed Learning Disabled if he’d gone to public school.

It’s definitely not an intelligence issue. More of a language processing or acquisition delay.

Ignore parenting books and experts. Check. Love and nurture. Check. I’m on it.

Thanks for stopping by, both of you. Hope to get more input from you in the future.

There is a bell curve of course but that is simply an indication of the averages not an indication of intelligence or ability. Bottom line is that if your children have any learning or intellectual problems then, if you have access to a competent doctor, they would have been detected by now.

As a father of two boys being raised by a bi-racial family, I’m Welsh my wife is Hungarian, I’m often confronted with different expectations. In Hungary, where we live now (11 years so far) children are not expected to learn to read until they are 7 or 8. In the UK the expected reading age is around 5 or 6.

These differences are giving me headaches but I’m learning to go with the flow. At the moment my eldest has just turned 5 and loves to sit and look at books, often he will tell me the story from his interpretation of the pictures or from what he remembers of when I last read the story to him.

Give it time, don’t listen to what other ‘experts’ tell you and most especially do NOT believe the parenting books. According to them my first child should have been walking at 12 months, he didn’t until 18 months, my second boy was running (a very fast totter at least) by 11 months.

Kids are all different and they all turn out OK with love, attention and nurturing.