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Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

What ages did you do? Were they able to keep up with the story OK at those ages?

My daughter is about to turn 6 and I think that the hobbit would be too much for her. I too would like to hear what age he started and if they had any resistance at first. My big problem now is the only Barbie book they had at the library was in Italian and google translate makes me seem like I’m having a stroke when I read it to her but she loves it anyway.

I probably wouldn’t have attempted it when the oldest was that young, but my girls were 7 and 5 when we started.

I started reading The Hobbit to my son (5 years old). We read half a chapter every night, or even less before he falls sleep. He loves it, and asks me to read to him when I almost forgot to do so. He asks A LOT of questions about new words and differences with the movies (he is a big fan of them). Our pace is quite slow, but it is a great time together.

I read the Hobbit to my daughter when she was 4 and to my son when he was 6, both closer to 5 and 7. I aimed for 10 pages a night of a pocket edition we have, which meant 25-30 nights or so.

My daughter got really scared with the giant spiders in the forest and wanted to quit, but I managed to convince her to go on. She was happy we did because everything turned out fine in the end. She was bored by the battle at the end of the book, but we got through it.

It's hard to know how much of the story my son understood. I usually reminded him what happened last time every time we started ("They were walking through the forest, remember?" or "Last time, they just reached the mountain!"). The individual parts are easy enough to understand, I think.

They both loved the riddle game with Gollum, and it sparked (or fed) an interest in riddles in both. It's an excellent book when you want to take the step up from children's books.

IMO, differences between individuals in verbal skills at developing ages are so different that any anecdotal evidence is unlikely to be helpful.

I've seen 4 year-olds completely rapt while listening to a story like that and 8 year-olds unable to follow it.

We have four special needs kids and, while we might have just gotten lucky, I firmly believe that our determination to read aloud to them from birth and expose them to classic literature from an early age has directly contributed to their ability to sit through the works and comprehend them at an early age. They’re definitely all developmentally different, and have begun speaking and reading at different times, but they’re all able to follow along well.

We have four kids, but only three are special needs. Most of them were able to follow "adult" works from a fairly young age, but one of them was not until age 8; he struggled following simpler works (e.g. Gannett's My Father's Dragon series) in the first grade. Once it "clicked" though, he was great.

When I looked into it, I found similar stories from educators of verbal skills not clicking until the 3rd or 4th grade, followed by a rapid catch-up and then zero lag. According to most special-ed folks I talked to, if there are more specific issues at a younger age (e.g. problems with reading comprehension, but not auditory, or vice-versa) it can be indicative of a learning disability.

You are 100% true about reading to them from a young age (and not worrying too much about "hard" words; kids don't know which words are supposed to be hard unless you tell them) makes a big difference. Seeing kindergarteners from homes without a single book in them vs ones read to from an early age is rather eye-opening.

My daughter didn't really speak until she was 5. Just a few words at age 4. Was diagnosed as autistic. Always loved books and being read to. Had intense reading comprehension issues until 5th grade or so. Couldn't remember the word or sentence she just read. Was home schooled for 5th thru 8th grade. Somewhere in there her comprehension issues fixed themselves. She reads everyday, and is a straight A student. She's 15 now, and wants to be a writer. The brain is a wonder. She started slow, but finished strong. Some learning issues can sort themselves out, so never lose hope.

There were definitely times I had to remind them of past events and help them understand the more mature passages, but we started when they were 7 and 5 and finished when they were 10 and 8.

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