Jake can read.

We were quite aware of the fact that Jake can read, or at least learn and memorize words. We had been writing three letter words on his doodle pad or paper and having him read them for a couple of months now. I guess I didn't realize how big his reading vocabulary is. Most of it I'm sure he is learning from the Signing time videos because they always put the written word on the screen when teaching the sign. I realized that he could read one day when I was watching the signing review at the end of the DVD (because he was getting ahead of me on sign language) and he read the word "help" when it flashed up on a blank screen. I thought "oh, he's memorized this." when I realized that he'd never seen the signing review before. He had read the word.

What is probably most surprising is that the reading, like most of Jake's "splinter skills" as they called them on his special education report, is that they are self-taught. His drawing, number and letter recognition, counting and other skills he has learned from TV or educational electronic toys, and yes, sometimes us. His drawing however seems to be almost completely his.

Rarely are his therapists and evaluators interested in these extraordinary skills. They are more concerned with helping him with what he can not do. This is understandable. I think I may work with him more on reading words and get a head-start on that particular skill. Why not, right? Its possible that Cindy may disagree, and I will surely ask her, but hey, if he can already read well when he is five, we can always use the extra time not spent learning to read focusing on social skills.. maybe?

Tonight I made some flash-cards and showed them to him. I wrote some words that I was sure he was familiar with from baby signing time. He surprised me on a couple of them I didn't know he knew "please" and "sorry". The video is of the second time he had seen these particular flash-cards, and he was pretty distracted. He was more interested in holding and turning the cards himself, like he is doing at the end of the video.