Ever learned to identify all her letters, both upper and lowercase, by the time she was 20 months old. When I noticed her interest in letters, at 19 months, I found her some 3 inch magnetic letters, and put them on our metal front door, where she could have free access to them. I talked with her about them whenever she showed interest in them. The memorization of her letter names was a game to her, and never seemed to pose any difficulty at all.
During the next month, she started to spontaneously sight-read a few, short words, like her name, her sister's name (Sky), and some easy ones like, "moon," book," "cat," "dog," etc. I made a video of Ever at 21 months, doing a little sight-reading, and a lot of identification of exotic animals, which you can see on YouTube:
When she was 23 months old, we were trash-picking in front of a neighbor's house, who had put out a veritable mountain of used kids' toys for giveaway. I found a tiny, 2-inch-square, board book, with a picture of a fish on the front, and just one word. I handed it to Ever, and she immediately yelled out the word on the book, "Opposites!" I knew that she recognized the word from another book she had, called "Scruffy Teddy's Book of Opposites," but that didn't stop me from being shocked and delighted at her reading such a long, early sight-word!
I want to be very clear that I never drilled her on her letters, or tried to get her to start sight-reading. It's just something she started doing on her own, because she enjoyed it. I do my best to reinforce her efforts with lots of praise and attention, which may explain some of her success. Mostly it is just her natural pattern of development.
We have read a lot to Ever, since she was a tiny infant, and she has always liked it. I have always tried to make sure I only read to her as long as she was enjoying the experience, stopping at the first sign of boredom or squirminess.
I would love to see her move into full-fledged reading this year, and suspect that she may take the next step soon. I won't push her in that direction, though, since I believe that would be counter to her well-being. Whatever direction Ever's reading and cognitive development takes, we will do our best to be sensitive to her needs, and to respect her individual timeline for learning.
