Word recognition by 18 month old: Is this unusual?

[sunflwrmoonbeam]

Is it normal for an 18 month old to consistently recognize a few words?

My daughter loves text, and will have me write out words all day. She'll even "read" grown up books, which is so cute. Anyways, she's been able to consistently recognize her name for about a month. Totally out of context, without prompting, placement doesn't matter, etc. She sees the letters and knows that's her name. Well, this week she seems ot have added 3 more words to this: Mommy, Daddy, and apple.

We have a copy of Apples to Apples out, which doesn't have a picture of an apple on it, and today she ran up to it and started saying "apple! apple!" We played around with writing words for awhile, and she consistently can pick out apple, Mommy, Daddy, and Evie (her name). I certainly don't think she's "reading", and while her language skills are good I wouldn't say they're remarkable (probably 200 words, occasional 2 word sentence, normal toddler mispronunciation).

So, is this normal? Obviously I'm not concerned, but I'm pleasantly surprised that she can recognize words at such a young age.

[hildare]

i don't think it's too abnormal, but probably indicates some early literacy skills that you should be pleased to see!  my 14 month old can sight read one word, 'hot.'  i think that kids can recognize text patterns in the same way they can images, she has just put the magic together that the text she recognizes corresponds to the actual word.  that means your dc will probably be a very early reader-- YAY!  I have seen a few other children do this..  it's usually the very bright ones, but it's too early to designate a child as 'gifted' at this age, though you may want to take a look at the gifted forum here and check out some of the stickies, just to get an idea. 

[sunflwrmoonbeam]

Thanks, I thought as much. Both DH and I were "gifted" (I was officially diagnosed and everything!) so I'm not terribly surprised she's quite bright. That said, I figured she'd be saying more sentences by now if she was gifted so this "reading" threw me for a loop, in a pleasant way of course.