This week, JediBoy has been very motivated to learn to read. I’m not sure how this new phase came about, but he realized that if he works his way through the yellow, orange and red books (Hooked on Phonics K-1), he would then be able to read the graded readers on his shelf. So he asks a few times during the day if I want to do reading (and who am I to say no?), and we sit with the “workbook” (no writing involved) or the HOP readers or a stack of word cards I made for him, and he works on it. He was quite proud tonight to read the first six HOP readers to PisecoDad as well as most of the early stories in the yellow workbook.
JediBoy crawled fairly early, and soon pulled up on furniture and cruised. He loved to go walking hanging on to a grown-up’s finger. We were certain he’d be walking by a year. But he didn’t let go and actually walk on his own until he was 15 months old. The day he figured out how to stand up in the middle of the room with nothing to hold onto was the day he found the confidence to start walking.
I think the reading process is similar. He knew his capital letters by about 17 months and knew lowercase letters by 24 months. He had learned the hard sounds by 2 1/2 and around the same time could read his name and one or two other words. We were certain he’d be reading sometime around his 3rd birthday. But here we are, just two months shy of his 5th birthday, and he’s been more or less at the same level for two years. All of a sudden - and I don’t know what event might have triggered this - he seems to have the confidence that he will be able to read, and so he’s willing to start reading.
I am grateful that I’ve been able to be relaxed about all of his developments. I didn’t worry when he wasn’t walking - because I could see that he had the physical skills necessary to walk, that there wasn’t a physical problem, and that he would walk when he was ready. But at the same time, I didn’t do nothing. I kept him walking along next to me, encouraged him to take a step or two from me to the couch, found him walk-behind toys and learned how to entice him to keep trying.
I haven’t worried that he wasn’t reading (to be clear about this, my sister read at 2 and I read at 3, so when he knew his letters and sounds by 2 1/2 we thought he was following in our path - though I certainly know there is a huge range of normal and don’t expect any child to read so early). I know he has the mental and physical skills to read, and I have confidence that he will read when he is ready. And yet, I haven’t done nothing. I have surrounded him with books and words. I read to him at absolute minimum half an hour a day and his dad does the same. He has tons of books available (over 1000 in his nursery, as I know all too well from a crazy weekend of cleaning-out), we visit the library and the book store almost every week, I have put up labels in the house, magnetic letters and then words on the fridge, surrounded him with phonics and whole word readers, reading programs and ideas. The resources were there - Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, Bob Books, Brand New Readers, Magnetic Poetry, Leap Frog, Hooked on Phonics, Sesame Street, The Electric Company - and now, something is starting to turn on inside.
It makes me giddy to see his confident self!
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