Early Readers

Most kids utter their first words between 9 months and two and a half years old. Thats the range experts consider normal. But Stormy Tucker and her husband wondered whether, at two, their twin sons were developmentally behind. They were fixated on numbers and letters. They soaked up their phonics DVDs. And they could recite the alphabet, but thats about all they could say. The twins started speech therapy as they were learning to speak. Their mom says the therapist came to her shocked. The boys who were just two years old could read. Thats something the tuckers already knew. Stormy said, "This blew our mind. We knew they could read little stuff. We were at the light down at Mead Johnsons and Justin looked up and said happy holidays. Thats when we realized, wow." "ss yuh yuh mm mm eh rr. S-u-m-m-e-r." They do it by sounding out the words, letter by letter, sound by sound. Their mom says they picked that up by watching and re-watching a Leap Frog Phonics DVD. Now the kids look for words where ever they go. "They took him down to do an MRI, and anyway it said radiology. And he looked up and said radiology. And the nurses could not believe it." The twins read restaurant reciepts, TV dinner ingredients, and announcements on the public access channel. Stormy says, the kids speech therapist wondered whether the boys have something called Hyperlexia. Its a condition where kids have language skills far beyond whats normal for their age. UE Assistant Professor of Psychology Dr. Elizabeth Hennon says it sounds a lot like Hyperlexia because its extremely rare for kids to naturally read as early as two or three years old, but thats not impossible. There are kids, for example, who can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about dinosaurs, because thats what interests them. Dr. Hennon said, "If they got really into words, its possible that they could just really be into reading, and they dont have to be obsessed with letters to think that this is fun." Justin and aaron have moved on from the phonics DVDs now to printing, writing bubble letters, adding and subtracting. Aaron even made his own moto music mix on Stormys cell phone and named it after himself. The twins are even learning Spanish and Sign Language to satisfy their thirst for language while they develop their social skills in preparation for kindergarten. Dr. Hennon says thats a good thing because reading is the number one predictor of how well students do in school. If you cant read, you cant use a text book from any subject.