To succeed in school and in life, literacy is necessary. It’s no wonder, then, that so many parents work hard to ensure that their children learn to read as soon as possible. Some parents buy phonics DVDs and flash cards and start teaching their kids to read almost from the day they bring them home from the hospital as newborns. Learn to distinguish when early reading is a sign of giftedness or just the work of diligent parents. For example, according to Piaget, children in the Concrete Operational Stage (ages 6-11), can logically think about concrete things, things you can see or touch, but still can’t manage to think logically about abstract concepts, which include concepts like love, peace, and life. But parents of gifted kids know their children may have been thinking logically about those issues even before they were 6. Learning a language requires nothing more than exposure to language. That just means that a child needs to hear people talk and have people talk to him. That development follows a typical process, and children around the world will follow a similar process. For example, a gifted child might not speak until he is two years old but then speak in complete sentences. It may look as though the child skipped over the two-word expressions, but they might not have expressed those ideas when their language development was at that stage. Not only does it have to be taught, but the brain must be sufficiently developed before a child can learn the skill. A child cannot learn to walk until his muscles are sufficiently developed. We can support a child and help him learn to walk, but until his muscles are strong enough, he isn’t going to be able to do it on his own. The same is true of reading. Learning the alphabet and the sounds letters represent is just the beginning. Even memorizing words really isn’t enough for a child to become a fluent reader. A reader must be able to remember what he read at the beginning of a sentence before reaching the end of a sentence, what he read at the beginning of a paragraph before reaching the end and so on. That requires a sufficient development of short-term and working memory. Reading is a difficult skill to master when it is being formally taught, and many children have a hard time reaching fluency when they are in third grade. If a child reaches fluency before age five after having been taught to read, there’s a good chance the child is advanced, since his brain has to have reached a sufficient level of maturity.
