How did you learn to read

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My mum tells me that I knew all the letters of the alphabet when I was 18 months, which I don't actually remember, but I do remember teaching myself to write words on my blackboard when I was three, and that I could read what I wrote.

I've pretty much always loved reading. I remember being frustrated at school whenever the class took turns reading aloud. Everyone read so slow! So I'd read ahead while keeping track of where everyone else was up to.

My son, who's 7 & has autism, is a good reader also, but he doesn't enjoy fiction the way I do. His favourite things to read atm are street directories, street signs & phone books (addresses, not phone numbers).

My partner has a way of reading I find intriguing. He takes in whole chunks of text at once (small paragraphs even). I can't even begin to comprehend how he does it.

I don't remember it, but aparantly my Gramdmother helped me learn to read. But I couldn't read a clock (unless it was digital) until I was about 16/17.

I had a problem with the whole fraction thing. To me a quarter was 25 (cents) so of course a quarter on a clock was 25.

I don't remember learning to read, or not knowing how to read for that matter. But my dad told me two stories from that part of my childhood:

1) 18 months old. I liked playing with alphabet blocks. My dad would ask me "Find the B (for example)". I would then pick up the block with the Y or whatever on top, and turn it over to reveal the B. I could do it for any letter, and very rarely got it wrong.

2) 4 years old. My dad says I'd been reading since age 2 1/2, but nobody believed him. Some of his friends came over, and saw me reading the newspaper and assumed I was just looking at the pictures. Someone decided to find out for himself. He asked me what I was reading, and I told him I was reading about the Gulf War, with enough detail to confirm I was reading the story.

My mum says I knew how to read before school but I only remember having big alphabet cards and lots of books at home. I found school reading books were useless using "cried" in the wrong context and such. after all who says "here we go .Here come janet and John " and stuff.? As i was ill a lot in the first year of school I was slow learning to read and learned some library books by rote, mostly pictures eg Tintin when mMum read them to us at night in bed, she was very good at doing different voices. Also the teacher in the first class taught us all to read aloud to her and then in the second class a teacher told us all to read inside ourselves and even cough and work things out inside ourselves. then later again they want to know how we work things out! confusing. I picked up the times on a clock fairly easily as I did not see a digital one for ages but it was confusing how people said it eg 25 to 3 or 3.45. then the 24 hour clock came in and some digitals do it but must do not and Dad sets them in our family. Real children's library books are great!