toddler fun: one of each letter problem

[walkitout]

T. has been spelling words from SuperWhy. One of these words is "wheel", but he only has one of each letter, hence, a problem to be solved.

First solution: whel
Second solution: whe l (he left extra space in the lineup)
Latest solution: wheol

We're really wondering about that. They are upper case letters, so there's no real possibility of confusing the two, and past experience indicates he knows there's an issue here. Which forces us to consider the vastly improbable: this is a phonetic approximation.

Oy.

What the hell is going on here? I was fully sold on the idea this was see/say or whole word or whatever the non-phonetic thing is. But this really looks like a phonetic choice. And it's _definitely_ a vowel, which hardly seems random, given that he had 22 letters to choose from and only 4 of those are vowels (as many as six, if you really want to push things with the w and y).

Someone needs to tell him he's too young for this, but I am so not prepared to go there.

Comments

don't think it's a brightness issue

[walkitout]

If it were, he'd be talking a lot more. :l I think it's just some kids do some things and other kids do other things.

There is almost certainly a strong genetic component on his father's side, also, in that he's got a couple cousins who were reading fluently at 3 (as in, I watched the younger one reading the scroll off an ESPN sports channel and asking what various words meant -- no possibility of having memorized something ahead of time). That family was huge into Baby Einstein stuff and they are also big believers in educational toys. Both parents are very verbal (both lawyers), the father more so than the mother (altho the mother is R.'s sister), in that the mother shares R.'s atrocious spelling. My side's pretty verbal too, but we have poor documentation on when I learned to read.

Given the family situation with the cousins, I'm betting this will be treated as more or less normal. Which all by itself is weird.

Re: don't think it's a brightness issue

[(Anonymous)]

Um -- I'm assuming you're only kidding about the late talking ruling anything out, right? 'Cause check out this kid, who apparently could read "before he could talk" (which I assume they don't mean completely literally, but more like what T. is doing -- starting to crack the reading code before getting real chatty): http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,960185,00.html

Not that I'm saying that T. is in that league. It's no insult to say he probably is not!

Helen S.

Re: don't think it's a brightness issue

[walkitout]

Holy Cow.

Geez.

I actually wasn't kidding before; I really am a firm believer in each-person-has-some-strong-point-(and some weak ones, too).

Wonder how he turned out?