How old were you when you first started reading?

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i can remember very well my early childhood experiences, but i can not remember what ages i was when i remember what i remember.

my parents said i spoke at 3.5 years for the first time. i remember when i started to speak, but i did not know what age i was. i started to speak in full sentences and was able to talk as if i had known how to talk for ages, but just refrained from it.
i remember long before i first spoke, i knew what many words meant.

i could also draw simple figures well. i liked to look at books when i was 18 months old. by 2 i was turning the pages (those ages were told to me by parents).

i remember the first book i ever looked at with obsession. i was 2 and it was a children's dinosaur book for 3rd graders.
i remember looking at the pictures first. i looked at every picture on every page, and when i was finished, i relooked at every page over and over.
after a month or 2 (i guess), i noticed the writing and looked at it. it was a puzzle to me.
i knew it must be about the dinosaurs, and because i had seen each picture lots of times and wanted to know more, i wanted to know what the symbols (writing) meant.

i did not ask.

after some time, i noticed that symbols were repeated over and over, so i got a pencil and a paper and copied the letters that i saw in the book onto the paper. i did not repeat any letters i already had written.
this became a fun game, and after the whole book had been used in this game, i had most of the alphabet written on my paper (not in order obviously).
my parents remember finding this when i was 3.

i realized that reading would be easy given the fact that there were so few different symbols, so i started to point to words.

i knew people "read" because i had seen people looking at these symbols before, and they were speaking while being guided by the symbols (dad reading an article to mum for example).

my parents were happy that i was starting to "show an interest in the world".

so while they were interested in what i was looking at, i pointed to words (i was not speaking yet) and they pronounced them. i pointed to words i wanted them to pronounce, and then i pointed to similar looking words, and i wanted to hear not only the sound of the words, but the pronunciative differences between the words. eg: i remember pointing to "donkey" and she pronounced it. then i pointed to "don't" and she pronounced it. so then i knew exactly how "T" was pronounced as well as the "D" and the "O" and the "N" and the "K" and the "EY"

if i had just left it at "donkey", how would i be able to tell where the phonetics of the uttered word corresponded to the letters?
but if you choose 2 similar structures and one is smaller than the other, then you can deduce by subtraction the exact pronunciation of all the letters.

other examples are "trick" and "brick" (to resolve "t" and "b"), then "rick" and "rock" (to resolve "i" and "o") etc, and solve be reduction how symbols sound.

i was reading by 3 years and 2 months they say.

i am not smart but curious.

Couldn't fully comprehend sentences until I was eight. I could read individual words (particularly the shorter ones) but couldn't put it all together. Once I started reading, I've never stopped. BTW, the Internet really facilitates obsessive reading.

Z

I was between four and five years old when I figured out how to read.

My youngest grandson learned to read at three and a half.

My oldest son learned to read at around four years old.

ruveyn

I can't live without the Internet!! !! I spend 24/7 on it and have Internet Addiction Disorder!! ! If I was born with Dyslexia, unable to read at all.....no Internet and poof! Me be dead! I totally agree with your statement about the Internet.

Yah, internet is soooo much fun. It makes life much more interesting for those of us who like to type, write and read. Makes it easier to watch a variety of genres too for those who like to watch stuff. It allows people to upload for those that want to be seen. It's got something for everyone.

Since before I can remember. My parents have told me about me "reading" (i.e. pronouncing the words aloud, but obviously not comprehending them) one of those wall-hanging CPR charts shortly before my 3rd birthday. My comprehension, on the other hand, developed pretty normally, and I'd say throughout my life it's consistently been pretty average, maybe a little below average.

Very young. I read a lot and was way ahead of the usual age-appropriate reading material.

For all I can remember from elementary school, I know I can read. I don't know if I could read before, because reading is something that is taught in first year of elementary school here in Belgium. So I think I was six, but I should ask my parents if I could read earlier on.

Can't remember the exact age, although I'm sure I was reading at age 5/6.

Although I didn't speak until I was five, I was able to read by three. I used to spell words out of refrigerator magnet letters and blocks with letters on them sometime around 30 months.....I could read out of my children's books by 36 months. My parents knew I was very interested in letters, but they did not know that I was actually reading the words.....although I didn't understand how to say them. I couldn't read out loud until I was five, when I began speaking. It was actually being able to read that enabled me to learn how to speak.....without understanding written language I would have had no way to understand spoken language.....

My first words were "goodnight mouse." My mother was reading me Goodnight Moon, and that was my favorite line int he book...I actually had scratched the little mouse off of the page with my fingernail.....my mom turned the page....and I read the next page...and the next one.....

That's how I started speaking....

I think I was somewhere between 2 and a half years old and 3 years old when started I reading. I started off reading the sort of books I would have been expected to read, but by the time I was about 5 I wanted to read books designed for children aged 8 to 11, and by the time I was 9 I was reading books for teenagers and adults. When I was in primary school we had "reading hour" on some days and I'd get frustrated and bored because I preferred books with more advanced content than just the typical "Once upon a time there was a pretty Princess who met a Prince, blah blah blah they get married and live happily ever after" fairytale type stories that the school had on the shelves.

I was reading Dr. Seuss by pre-school, I believe, and I was tested as having my reading level as college level by fourth grade... Don't remember the ages, though.

We don't know actually.

I understood what I read sometime around my 7th birthday, but I could 'read' and spell well before I that. I remember reading, not finding it difficult or new when I was about 5 years old. I probably learnt before?

It doesn't surprise me that nobody knows when I started reading out loud and know spelling. I had no interest in letters, writing or reading until I was in my pre-teens. Might have been the ADHD though.

I have a photo of myself just before my second birthday reading a supermarket tabloid. My eyes are too focused to be looking at the pictures or glancing at headlines.

My parents didn't realize I could read until we were at a restaurant and I went to the waiting area, picked up an unfamiliar picture book and started reading it to them. I was about 3 or 4.

I'm pretty sure I wasn't hyperlexic because I actually comprehended what I read.

4/5

Just last night, my mom was telling me I was reading when I was 3.