Speech delays and early readers

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I remember my mother once telling me that I didn't not speak at all until I was about 2 1/2 years old, and that then I started speaking in full and complete sentences. Does anyone else have this sort of history? Does this qualify as a speech delay? On the one hand, I was not speaking at all by age 2, but on the other hand, it sounds like I was saving it up until I could put a sentence together and converse properly with the adults. (I was the first child in my whole extended family.)

Perhaps it's possible that I simply attached myself to print and didn't bother to talk for awhile. I don't remember learning to read. I've always known how to read. In the first grade, I was totally freaked out by the Dick and Jane books. I thought they were the stupidest things ever conceived. When the text said "See father play," I read it aloud as "See father juggle," because in the picture, the father was juggling. The teacher told me to stop guessing. But I wasn't guessing. I could see the word "juggle" spelled out in my mind. It was the right word for the picture. It was more real than the dumb thing on the page.

Does this resonate with anyone else?

You basically summed it up for me right there.

My mom said I didn't really start to talk until I was about 1 1/2.

I started reading at age 3. In kindergarden, Dick and Jane was wasy stuff.

Can't say I had any experiences quite like yours though.

I started reading in 1st grade (nowadays, that's forever...and yes, it was Dick and Jane...kid you not... . I didn't 'get it', and then in the course of about 5 minutes, I could. Never stopped from that moment forward...

Not speaking until age 2 1/2 would be considered a speech delay, and skipping right to sentences would be considered abnormal development, but not severely so.

My son did not speak till age 5, did not use sentences till age 6, but by the time he could talk was able to read close to an adult level.

I didn't read early. I learned the alphabet when I was 4 or 5 and learned to read when I was 6 but I wasn't really reading until I was 8.


I was 5 when I started talking but I was real hard to understand but I was 6 when I was finally easy to understand. My mother said I was 4 but I hardly spoke a word from what I saw. She probably had the age wrong about when I started to speak.

I wasn't able to hold a conversation until I was 6 and said some words and possibly phrases at 4.. but my mom swears she remembers me reading at 3. Of course I didn't understand what I had read.

My mom said I didn't have a speech delay, so. *Shrug* But I dunno.
I did have lots of speech problems though, and still have some.

I don't remember if I was an early reader, but I think I might have been.
I do remember getting into Dean Koontz and Stephen King books at an age that was rather young to be reading those.

My mum says I started talking at age six month, but since I was born with a cleft palate and a split tongue it took her until I was 18 months to prove it to a doctor (she said I was talking they said it was just making sounds, by the time I was 18 months I must have got clearer)

When It came to reading I read quite early, by age 5 I could read the bible on my own. I remember when I started school at age 4 I picked up a book, I can't remember what It was called, but the only word it had on every page was "Help" by page five I was saying help, for a whole over reason. After spending ages trying to convince my teacher I could read she finally let me get a book from the highest class, and told me to read that (assuming I wouldn't be able to), only then did they access my reading skills, found out that I had a reading level of a 14 year old and moved me up a class (except then the other parents complained that why should I move up when their kids weren't and so they held me back a year to please the parents!)

We're from the same era, I see. Good thing you got it and kept on going. I remember sitting there thinking, "I'm glad I already know how to read, because if I had to learn by this slow and excruciating method, I'd never make it." It was like watching someone take apart a car engine and put it back together one tiny, red, yellow, green, or blue piece at a time.

Wow! That's amazing. I've never met anyone with that particular experience. Very cool.

My son is an aspie, and his language acquisition was fascinating. Of course, at the time, we had no idea about autism, but starting at about 12 months (not unusual) he started using about one or two new words per day. He never strung words together, though, until much later. I kept a list of the words, and although the pronunciation wasn't always right, they were words like:

fish
butterfly
porthole
Volkswagon
statue
bulldozer
ambulance
counter

"mama" and "dada" were pretty far down on the list.


We used to go for a walk around the block every day when he started walking, and there were parked cars all along the road. He would point to the symbol on each hubcap or bumper and say, "Pontiac", "Mazda", "Toyota". At the age of 13 months, he knew about 10 auto manufacturers! The pronunciation was odd, but we knew what he was saying. (He doesn't know or care about any of that now.) He also learned other symbols, including letters, and learned to read effortlessly, without any intervention. By the time he set foot in a school, he was reading at a fourth grade level, with good comprehension (although he doesn't comprehend stuff he's not interested in, but that's because, as he says, he refuses to really read it. THAT is a whole other aspie issue, and one that is causing a lot of problems for him.)

I took a university class on language acquistion when he was one and a half, and I read that at 18 months, a typical child has between 2 and 50 words in his working vocabulary. My kid had over 400. (I thought it just meant he was a genius. He had to start licking his kindergarten teacher's leg before we got a clue.)

Apparently my first word was "No," a fact that my mom has brought up about 100 times in the past 40 years, but she never says what my age was. Probably at a normal time. My mom tells me that I taught myself to read real early. I certainly remember wondering why they told us to sound out all the letters in a word while reading, rather than just look at the word and say it. It didn't occur to me that other kids couldn't just look at a word an tell what it was. (Of course those kids are all grown up now and have jobs like "lawyer" and "school superintendant" and "mayor", and well, I don't. )

I was both an early reader and a late talker. I don't know if I learned to do both at the same time or not, though.

And, lucky me, we didn't have Dick and Jane at school. We had Mr. Mugs (a big fluffy dog in a space helmet) and the pink popcorn planet. So even though the books were super easy to read, they were still fun.

Began reading Koontz at 10 years of age.

I actually picked up a King book first, read a few pages, and had to put it down. Could not get into it. Then I picked up "The Mask" and was quite enthralled. Good times.

Didn't start talking until possibly two, three, or even four years old according to my mother. She can't exactly remember... Apparently it was a big problem, as I was recommended for institution by one doctor for that and various other problems... Adding to the fact that I was slow (actually slow, as I would do what I wanted, at my pace, and not move along...), and a bit spacey, I wouldn't be surprised if I was that late in talking... Being in my world was a problem.

Talked on time, read early--and obsessively. I'd read all my textbooks the first week of school... Looking back on it, maybe that wasn't so smart; the rest of the year ended up boring, usually. I stopped reading textbooks early around the 7th grade or so, but I may take it up again in an effort to keep up with engineering classes. Some of the stuff they teach you really goes FAST, and if you fall behind you're screwed.

I'd say that it's not a "delay", as whilst you didn't have any words at the age of two, a half of a year later you instantly caught up to your peers (surpassed even). Well, it's probably a slight delay, but since you advanced so quickly, the slight delay was of no consequence.

I had the same thing, but I started at 4 1/2, which is a moderate delay, but nothing severe (when I started speaking, it wasn't grammatically correct, and I had the usual pronoun problems and speaking in third person). I needed speech therapy to correct this; I wouldn't have improved without such after I started talking.

I was way behind in reading and writing (the usual battery of IQ tests, what's wrong with this kid, held back grades, etcetera).