Oklahoma Boy Devours Sight Words to Delight of Internet
Chad Henderson, 5, is a viral star thanks to his reading skills.
— -- The start of a new school year is still clearly on the mind of Internet users who have thrown their attention on the nearly one-minute video of a 5-year-old boy reading his sight words.
The video shows Chad Henderson, a kindergarten student in a Tulsa, Oklahoma, suburb reading the words to his father as part of a homework assignment.
Chad does not stop at the sight words, though, but goes on to read the instructions at the bottom of the page – written in full sentences – intended for parents to read.
Chad’s dad, Joe Henderson, posted the cellphone video to YouTube, where it has been viewed over 100,000 times, and Reddit, where it has garnered hundreds of overwhelmingly positive comments.
“I’m floored that it got that much traction,” Henderson told ABC News. “I was just posting it for my friends and family to see my son reading.”
Henderson, a stay-at-home dad, said his son has been reading since around the age of 3.
He titled his Reddit post, “This is the result of reading to your child every night before bedtime ...”
“I don’t think reading to him caused him to learn how to read but it made him curious about wanting to learn how to read the words,” Henderson said. “From there, he just took off.
“I really give him credit because he was interested,” Henderson said of Chad, who attends a public school.
The viral video was filmed earlier this month, just days after Chad’s first day of school.
Henderson says he had never even heard of sight words, or common words kids are encouraged to memorize so they can recognize them easily in print, but his son knew them all right away.
“I just stood over him with my cellphone recording him, knowing that he would continue to read on down to the instructions,” he said.
Chad had corrective surgery for craniosynostosis, a birth defect that results in the premature fusion of cranial sutures, when he was 9 months old, his father said.
With all the attention the video has drawn, Henderson hopes parents whose children face the same surgery see it as well.
“I hope this serves as an encouragement for parents who might be worried that the surgery might cause intellectual problems,” he said.
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