At Sudbury schools, reading naturally occurs for students, but the age ranges from 4-12, with typical being 7-9. There seems to be little correlation to early

At Sudbury schools, reading naturally occurs for students, but the age ranges from 4-12, with typical being 7-9. There seems to be little correlation to early reading and a love of reading, anecdotally from these schools. In fact, often the ones who learn to read later seem to love reading more than the ones who read earlier. The first books, of any kind, my daughter read were Harry Potter books. She went from not reading at age 8, to reading chats with her friends at age 9 (pandemic time), to having read the entire 7 book series by the end of age 10. No one taught her how to read. Writing, using devices, arithmetic, she largely acquired them all on her own as she matured. While I am biased, she seems well-adjusted and quite bright. I have no doubt that she is capable of mastering whatever she would like to master. Note that the article was looking at a cohort study. It was not based on randomly assigning "pleasure reading in early childhood" which means cause and effect cannot be ascertained. My guess is that if they were to measure lifelong Sudbury students they would find well-developed cortical areas regardless of early childhood reading or not. The development probably relates to constructing complex understanding of the world (or fictional worlds) which independent play as well as reading can do, but conventional teaching cannot.