And some word recognition. Austen is amazing when it comes to practical knowledge and ability to solve problems — when she explains why traffic isn’t moving or why the plants in the back yard died she sounds like an adult. Her manual dexterity and physical agility are off the chart. Although she writes and recognizes letters and knows the sounds they make, she is only slightly interested in strings of letters on a page. She prefers looking at pictures in a book and guessing the story or making up the story. Deciphering sight words like ‘the’ is boring. Sounding out words like ‘bat’ and ‘word’ is too slow and annoying.