OK, I realize this isn't that impressive to anyone else. Kids read all the time, and there's plenty of them who learn to read earlier than the average. But I don't care.
Our 5-year old (Kindergarten) son has started reading by himself. He grabbed a 2nd-Grade level chapter book (fairly small print, no pictures, etc), sat down on the floor and started reading. And he's getting almost all of the words right.
Best of all, he decided to do it entirely on his own; no prompting or suggestion from us, just went into his room and started reading :)
You can't believe how proud my wife and I are of our little dude!
That's it. Not much of a diary, I know, but screw it; I'm a proud papa :)
Update: Holy Moly. OK, I know people often say "didn't think this would hit the Rec list", but really, I truly didn't.
Thanks to everyone for the outpouring of congrats/mazel tovs/woo-hoos/etc :)
To answer some questions:
--Yes, my wife and I are both voracious readers (I don't read as much as I used to, but still have a good 1,000 or so novels/reference/history/etc books around; my wife puts my collection to shame, she has easily 3,000+ books)
--Yes, we also both read to him every night (and over the past 2 years we've gradually shifted him to reading to us every night)
--Yes, his kindergarten and whole elementary school is set up to make sure that the kids are reading/writing/etc at a level that's tailored for their specific level, so there shouldn't be an issue of him getting bored/etc from the work being too easy for him, always being challenged, etc.
Anyway, thanks again; this was a wonderful Valentine's Day gift from him...and from all of you :)