Actually, you might be exactly right on the money there. I've seen 3 studies about forcing kids to learn to read early and how it can be damaging to developing brains. The better and more natural way is to give the kid massive amounts of exposure to text- and I mean thousands of hours- and then provide explicit instruction to address the areas that kids did not pick up on their own. But what to do when parents refuse to read to their kids because they are tired or busy? I scratch my head on that one daily. Of the 6 kids I have in my reading class, I think 4 of them would probably not be there if they had received the early ed instruction. And, I don't mean early ed by a pre-k teacher, but by a loving mom or dad holding him/her and showing by their actions that literacy is important and YOU are important.
If you would like I can see if I can find a link to one of those studies, I think it's still on line. It was put out by UVA in connection with one of my masters classes -- it might still be linkable. Very interesting.
There's a book out called *Better Late than Early* by Drs. Moore and Moore, that discusses that very issue. Many children are not physiologically ready for school until 10. The optic nerve is among the last to be myelinated and so the signal is often garbled by the time it gets to the brain. They state that many of the cases where kids are put in special programs to help with there dyslexia improvement came because the child matured physically not because the program worked. But since the child improved while in the program, the program is given the credit.