Identical Twins Learning To Read

Posted on January 8, 2012 by No Comments

Our identical twin girls are 4 and are learning to read.  They have always enjoyed books and we read to them daily but learning to read has happened purely out of their desire to play on the computer.  Recently, they have both become little computer zombies which I’m not too enthralled about but we are in the middle of British Winter Time and home-educators so it is fairly normal practice to use the computers during this time.

We have a subscription to http://readingeggs.co.uk which is a fun website designed to help children to learn to read and the girls really like to use it.  It’s something they are doing more and more independently which is great news for me ans it gives me time to prepare dinner or get on with something else.

I am keen to watch this particular skill develop not only because it opens up a whole new world for them but also from an identical twin development perspective.  To date, their developmental milestones have all happened at similar times.  No, there haven’t been any spooky incidents whereby teeth have miraculously come through on the very same day and no they didn’t take their first steps at exactly the same time but they are pretty much on par with everything they do.  I wonder will this next learning stage be the same? Will they go neck and neck or will one of them develop a love for reading and the other won’t? It is very much watch this space.

I know from my eldest twins (although fraternal) that in terms of reading they couldn’t be more far apart with one having their head in a book constantly and a reading age well above his own age and the other being Dyslexic thus finding reading a far more frustrating process.

This time round it is different, the girls are very much individuals but they are identical twins so I am interested to see how this goes and how they will manage their already evident competitiveness.