My mother taught me to read at the same age and by the same method Erik Hoel ("The Intrinsic Perspective," q.v. at Substack) recently documented teaching his son, and by his account to about as good effect. Mama doesn't have the letters after her name that Dr. Hoel does, of course, but I don't blame a jilted academic for feeling the need to complicate an independent and obviously enthusiastic rediscovery, and the flight attendants on the airliners I boarded unaccompanied as a child would be among many who could attest that nothing did better to keep me quiet than to lend me a technical manual I'd never seen before.

I'm very sure it is harder to achieve this now than then, I having been born at a time when color LCDs were just beginning to make tentative steps from laboratory prototype to consumer product. Unless Hoel is taken for the liar I've seen no cause to think him, though, it surely still can be done.

Easy for me to say, though, never having had or raised a child. I like to hope I still could recommend the method if I had, but who knows? I do think it asks uncommon interest from the tutor.