Whole word worked fine for me. I was reading by 3 using it.
Straw man - 3-year olds don't read words that need the sounding out of syllables, or looking things up in a dictionary. Everyone starts by tiny-word recognition... unfortunately, that's where everyone stays now...
Smart kids crack the code in time, no matter how they are taught. Some like you and me crack it rather early.
There are two interesting things: are you saying that you were reading those words as sight-words? That is, graphic designs? Probably not. How could you be sure?
Second, even so, more than half the kids don’t learn to read, or only very poorly. And thus we have millions of functional illiterates. Some experts say a few sight-words can’t hurt. I’ve simply decided as a tactical matter to campaign against sight-words generally. So even if I’m wrong about the stray genius, you, I want to do the right thing for the great majority.
50,000,000 functional illiterates is the big crime of the 20th century.
(For more on what it’s like for kids, please Google: “40: Sight Words—The Big Stupid.”)
And..Ok so maybe you're real bright. How do we know that the method used by your mom and day would work for those with an IQ of 100?