How old were you when you first started reading?

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I'm pretty sure I could read before age three.

I was an early reader, as well, just like my two sons.

I think I was about three, although my mom didn't make a huge fuss like moms do nowadays. Back then you just got on with life; nowadays parents have to analyze and compare everything, and get it all on video.

I do remember reading in school. I couldn't understand why, when kids read aloud, they said the words in a slow, choppy way, or sometimes said the wrong word completely. My AS son was the same way; when his class was reading "The...cat....sat....on....the....mmmmat" he was reading long, complex sentences with inflection. The teacher taught the class to touch each word as they read it, so for a while he regressed to choppy reading. Then he refused to read out loud at all.

I think there is some kind of reading gene. It came so naturally to myself and my kids (and my mother), that there was never a time when any of us had to think about it. There was no conscious process of learning to read, and school had nothing to do with it. We just read. Then there are other people who really struggle. I don't think it's an "intelligence" thing, per se, either, because there are plenty of people who are obviously
intelligent, who need to go through that process of sounding out words.

Now...try to teach me to dance, and it's a whole other thing. Show me the world's simplest dance step a thousand times over, and I won't be able to even begin to copy it. I'm totally, utterly lost. So, I've got the reading gene, but not the dancing gene.

Average age, I guess. I don't know what that is though. :B
I remember haaating learning to read. "City", man. That word plagued me for like a month, LOL. IT'S NOT KITTY.
But then when I finally learned, I read aaalllll the Goosebumps books. Monster Blood will always be the best.

I also started at age 3, according to my mother.

2ukenkerl,

The DSM has this in regards to such with Autism:

I was 3 and read nothing but Enid Blyton books in those days.

I was able to read at age two, and I was able to start reading non-fiction at age 5. However, I was unable to read any sort of fictional book until age 17. For me, there was a huge gap between reading and actual comprehension of subjects that were of no interest to me.

Apparently by around 2, but I had no idea what the words meant...'least that's what my grandma tells me.

I was three - the story has it that I was stuck in a hospital bed (Edinburgh, 1950s) and bored, and my five year old sister showed me how. Cute, eh?

Anyhow, learning to read before I learned to talk sort of led into some kind of naive speed reading, which I've been doing ever since.

I was 2 when I was taught to read. My dad was a teacher though and taught literacy so that would have been pretty helpful...

It's kinda like that part in Rain Man when the doctor asks him to calculate a massive sum, which he does, and when he's given a simple sum worded with English (rather than your basic numerals), he doesn't know the answer. He skill is remarkable, it's just not really applicable to modern society [as it has calculators].

Hyperlexia is being able to read text at an early age, and parrot it back, without knowing what's being read. It is remarkable, as it's reading at a far more advanced level than normal, it's just that the understanding isn't there.

Plus, individuals with these skills above tend to be poor in other areas, so people tend to focus on the positives.

I taught myself how to read at age four. I was another hyperlexic Aspie. Books were my best friends all throughout my childhood.
-OddDuckNash99-

I read at 4½ years. I've been told (and also remember) that I came with the newspaper to my parents and read a headline aloud. Something like that it was necessary to act now to rescue the otter. As I remember it I understood the words, except that I didn't know what an otter was.

Reading by pre school so around 3.