Reading, Phonics, Site reading, when ?

I started at four. Don't have kids, unfortunately, but the current wisdom is that not teaching phonics is a disaster for kids. From what I've seen coming out of the primary schools, I'd agree. Comprehension and usage is lousy. Sight reading is unavoidable, and must be fluent enough to understand concepts and basal level language interpretation. Too young- never. Sooner is better. Feeling at ease while learning is probably a lot easier than forcefeeding a whole language into a five year old and expecting them to pick it up. Too old is when it becomes a liability in school. That would mean any time after the first year. Kids getting left behind really suffer trying to catch up. It's a social mess, and an educational horror story. Homeschool should be better than other forms. We now have the best ever teaching technology, and a lot of specialists in learning methods. In my opinion there's no room for blue sky processes in teaching people how to communicate. Anyone with reading difficulty can become a social cripple. Kids without proper grounding in language start as social cripples. Even teachers can see them as poor pupils, if they don't understand that basic skills are missing.

i must have been in my infancy when my mom started reading to me. my mom used to tell me that i began picking up a book at age 4 and really looked as if i was actually reading when in fact i just memorized the whole story, having been read to me many times over. (lol!) seriously, though, i think kids start to appreciate story books at age 3 or so. i guess that would be a good time to try to teach them how to read.

I started reading at the age of 3, my brother was 3 years older and I would listen to Mom working with him and doing his homework. By the time I got to 1st grade I was reading at an 8th grade level. I was the teacher's curse. My son on the other hand has learning disabilities, he did not start reading until he was almost 12. (Maybe if the school had done something before I threatened them it would have been better. For the average kid, reading is not bad. As a Mom who dealt with LD for a long time, I would definitely recommend phonics over whole language. My son learned more from reader rabbit software in6 weeks then he did in 3 years of school.