I made standard cooing and crying noises as the situation warranted, but I never even appeared to be trying to sound out words even under encouragement (again, I have to take the word of my parents and siblings on this, as I was far too young to remember any of it). Urgings of "Say Mommy!" were rewarded, I am told, with smiles and coos, but no apparent understanding of what was being asked of me or any indication that I knew how to consciously produce sounds vocally that had any meaning to anyone else.
Then, pretty much overnight (as my mother tells it), I began speaking in complete sentences. I went from appearing developmentally challenged to speaking as well as or better than an average toddler without really going through any of the preliminary steps. One day, I couldn't be pressed into saying "mama," and the next I was lucidly and coherently asking her for a bottle when I was hungry, and for a changing when I was...well, you know. She thought the whole things was a little disconcerting, but kind of funny: here she had been, worrying that I would have some real developmental problems that might follow me for the rest of my life, and had asked my pediatrician if there was anything noticeably wrong with me (and of course there wasn't), and suddenly I was speaking not just clear and perfectly understandable words, but had apparently grasped the rudiments of grammar and syntax as well and was able to construct very basic but almost entirely correct sentences to express my desires and reactions.
The same thing had happened with my reading. All throughout kindergarten, when it seemed as though I simply wasn't processing...
There was no outward sign of progress, just as there hadn't been with my talking. But at some point very the summer, everything just sort of clicked, and all of the lessons that had appeared to be passing right through me instead propelled me forward and into the realm of reading with a vengeance. It had become a family joke that I made up for the lost time I spent not talking by spending the next several years not shutting up. This pattern also carried over to my reading; though I had spent the year where I was supposed to be learning how to read seemingly incapable of it, it was difficult to get me to stop once I had started. I developed a passion for reading and for books in general, and this has continued to the present day. I find it hard to pry myself away from reading, and have stayed up all night to finish a book that I simply couldn't bring myself to put down (the Harry Potter series is an especially guilty pleasure of mine; ever since the first book, I've read each in a single sitting without pausing any longer than is necessary to make myself something to eat or drink or to...well, I'm sure you still know).
My writing hasn't developed in quite the same way as my reading; once the academic floodgates were opened by my ability to put words together I've progressed pretty much as expected. I still marvel at how the brain works, though, and am grateful that I am able to enjoy a good book as much as I typically do. life would certainly be more dull -- and more quiet -- if things had turned out differently.
