I taught my 3-year-old to read like a 9-year-old

Art for The Intrinsic Perspective is by Alexander Naughton Over a year has passed since I began teaching my toddler—then two years old—how to read (a process chronicled here). Now, I’m prepared to answer a burning scientific question that has kept absolutely zero researchers up at night: Can a three-year-old read The Hobbit? Turns out: yeah, pretty much. Here’s Roman reading from Chapter 1: In a hole, in the ground, there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry bare, sandy, hole, with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. Of course, there are still plenty of words he can’t read! While he could handle a lot of The Hobbit, I haven’t let him read the whole book himself (there’s too much violence, and the small font size, confusing names, and enough unknown words would likely wear him down). But for the class of books that he has any business reading alone, like early r ... Read full article.