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A young man woke up in his hospital bed. Just another mishap caused by over-tiredness, working too late. Just hit a tree. He wasn't even going that fast, but the doctors thought it best to spend the night.
His wife came in, their daughter trailing behind her, holding on tight to mommy's hand. "How are you feeling, honey?" she asks, sitting down on the foot of the bed.
"I'm fine." he answers.
He turns to the little one, wearing purple corduroy overalls and a little white tee-shirt. She's only just had her third birthday (although if you asked her she'd say she's almost four'); and she's carrying a teddy bear book under her arm. She climbs up onto the bed.

"I'm gonna read to you, daddy" she says confidently. Her daddy smiles and wraps his arm around her. He knows how she reads,' by pointing at the pictures and telling him what the bear is doing now. But it's cute.
She settles down and opens the book. She starts, going on and on in her high, sweet voice. Her daddy is just listening for a few minutes. Then he looks down at the page she is reading.'
The words coming out of her mouth are the same as the words on the page! He's shocked. He asks her to start again. She flips to the cover page and begins:
"The story of the lost teddy bear." she turned the page "the bear's fur was worn and tattered from being loved so much, but the boy didn't mind. He loved the bear just the way he was..."

This story is true. I know it is, because that little girl was me. How did I, at three years old, and without my parent's knowledge, learn to read? No, no one taught me, I have no older siblings to take me under their wing and show me the ins and outs of vowels and consonants and how they sound when laid next to one another. I had no older friends who went to kindergarten and brought me back their primers. I just learned it on my own.
I was a solitary child, I loved my little Playskool cassette player and the audio tapes, usually accompanied by brightly-illustrated storybooks. I would spend hours just listening to the soothing voices read aloud to me, flipping the pages when cued. Hours heaped upon hours of this technique, I learned that the words that were spoken were the same as the words on the page, and eventually, I learned which set of symbols made up each word.
This all happened very naturally, there was no frustrating repetition of the same sounds over and over, no being harassed because my pronunciation was off. It came easy, because it was taught

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