>>11173813I've been told that at age 3, a relative discovered that I could read.
My mother was an abusive autist who hated me and noise, so she'd tie me up in a high chair facing the television, and had a channel showing children's programs such as Barney, etc, with the TV muted. The closed captions loaded on the screen automatically.
My mom VHS taped several episodes of kids' shows and would later play the tape with me in the high chair all day, with the volume muted. I had already seen those before so I knew what they sounded like (my dad and siblings would put the volume on for me when she was out of the house).
I sat there all day I'm told, in a soiled diaper, covered in boogers, drool, and hungry, alone while she slept all day.
A distant cousin came to visit and noticed that I was reading and singing along to the words on the screen. She freaked out over it, and soon after an older brother of mine bought a series of children's books and sat with me, having me read aloud. This is how I learned English.
At age 4, my mother decided to force the family to move to Latin America. Her, myself, and a brother who was 8 years old then. He was notoriously dim-witted.
She proceeded to attempt to teach him Spanish using the book in pic related, which uses a similar strategy as the Dick and Jane books, and has you learn words, first by teaching you all possible syllables and their word-forming combinations. I sat to the side and watched the futile lessons unfold, apparently absorbing everything. I remember being a pain in the ass for my first grade teacher as I would be an insufferable know-it-all who would constantly suffer of boredom as she tried to wrangle the classroom normans into the reading lessons.
