She's Reading!!!!

[Anglyn]

My seven year old! She went to school for all of two weeks at age three. When she was traumatized by not wanteing to color at coloring time then made to sit separate from her friends at snack time and not given her snack but her coloring sheet, and this went on for days because they were going to "win", we pulled her out. It took over a year before she would pick up a crayon again. Can you imagine how she would have done in school in general? Anyway, around five she said she wanted to learn how to read. Since she had asked, I thought I could teach her. She was pretty miserable when I tried, even with a book recommendation from this very forum. So I stopped. I bought several ABC posters and put them up all over the house. I showed her starfall.com and reader rabbit etc. then I left her alone. At some point she started asking me 'how do you spell....." then using the posters to figure out how to write the letters. She learned her ABC's and could recognize them and write them but seemed to stall out. Still I didn't push. Her 18year old brother, who just graduated public high school, told me I was making her dumb, that he could read in kindergarten that she should be going into second grade, why can't she read? My biggest battle was keeping him from saying these things in front of her. He's entitled to his opinion but he can't be torpedoing her self esteem that way! Anyway, my husband was started to question what we are doing, wanted me to buy a curriculum he could use with her when lo and behold, at age seven, she picked up a copy of Go Dog Go and READ IT!! yes, some of it is sheer memorization, but that's what whole language is! She sounded out some words she didn't know, which is phonics. I helped her with a few but holy cow!! When my oldest learned to read in public school it seemed more gradual to me. I know it's been in there peculating for two years, absorbing it. But if you didn't know how much time she spends asking what sounds this letter makes or how to spell that word, yeah, seems like she just suddenly and spontaneously started reading! No structured lessons ever! I am so happy and so relieved and so vindicated!!!! She's been doing addition and subtraction on homemade work sheets that her grandfather makes and she seems to love, using pennies he gave her in a toothpick holder to count. I've said for a long time that if she can add and subtract and read, then everything else is easy, since it's all just building on those basics. Her older brother is very impressed with her reading. She now reads as good as her 11 year old cousin who has been getting special help in the public schools forever. Said cousins mother was shocked by my advice to improve her daughters reading skills. I told her to go out and by all the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books because I know she loves those, and just let her read at her own pace! What's so shocking? Makes sense to me. I told her that my oldest, despite all that was done at school, did not learn to read well until he picked up harry potter. Practice is what will do it and practice comes with willingness so you have to provide things they like. Oh, I am so glad I found this. My oldest had panic attacks and stomach aches over spelling tests in first grade. And his sister learned the same things with absolutely no pressure. She had it so much easier. And her younger brother? He can already peck out a word on the keyboard if you tell him how it's spelled. So he's learning his letters and keyboarding at the same time! looking up dinosaur videos is really motivating and not anything they'd do in school with him. He's ADHD and I already see the behaviors that will get him labeled learning disabled and a behavior problem at school. In reality he is a very bright child who is high energy and has issues with impulse control. I'm afraid school would crush him. But seeing the things HE has learned (he's five) just from his sister (what little we have ever set out to teach her, no one has ever tried to teach him anything and yet he has absorbed it, proof that unschooling works!) I am just so grateful that I found this unschooling philosophy which makes perfect sense to me. At first, it didn't. At first i thought it was a fancy way to say you were doing nothing. The paradigm shift for me was when I realized unschooling is the exact thing I do in my job with the zero to three set (I"m an early intervention worker and we do child lead learning and embedded intervention) just extended to older kids and if it works so well with the younger ones, why wouldn't it continue to work with older ones? From that point, I never looked back! So thank you MDC unschooling forum because I first learned about it from you!!

[Starflower]

Congratulations to your DD! What a wonderful post.

[Martha_2sons]

Congrats! I'm hoping my 7 year old DS will be in the same situation soon!

[earthmama369]

That's awesome. Congratulations! I've noticed the same pattern with my dd, too. She'll express an interest in something, and the bigger the skill, the more time she takes to percolate and process. She expressed an interest in learning how to ride her bike last year, had one out-of-control tippy experience (didn't fall, just really didn't care for the sensation), and refused to get on a bike the rest of the year. This year, she went from training wheels to a balance bike to riding consistently without training wheels or touching the ground within the space of a week and a half. She's doing the same thing with reading now, too. She's been expressing an interest for two years, didn't react well to being taught, but in the past few months she's come light years closer to reading confidently. In my former lifetime (before kids), I was a high school teacher, and I'm finding it fascinating to see how my children learn when I get out of their way and just pay attention and be responsive to their requests for support.

[Piglet68]

That's so cool!

My son surprised us at age 4 by reading that very same book, Go Dog Go, one night during bedtime stories. On a whim I asked him if he'd like to read to me this time (I was beginning to suspect he knew more than we thought) and he read the whole book!

[rockportmama]

YEA!!! That's awesome, Anglyn! Congrats & thanks for sharing!

[cheery]

Inspiring story ... sorry she had to go through that experience at age 3 but of course we learn from everything ...

Congratulations & thanks for sharing!

[jillc512]

That's so great! I'm comparing this to an acquaintance whose son (going into 3rd grade) is doing a remedial reading class this summer because he's "behind". (Big surprise, the rest of the kids in the class are also boys.) It seems you can push and prod and force-feed, or you can just let them be and you end up at the same place (except with self-esteem and love of reading/learning intact).

I had a similar experience with DD (just turned 5!). She wanted to call her grandma, so I gave her the phone. I expected to have to tell her which numbers were which, but she knew them all!

[Anglyn]

jillc: that reminds me of how I knew my daughter had learned her numbers. We pulled up a friends apartment complex and she asked why there was a number five on the side of the building. Shortly after she began telling me how much things cost in the grocery store.

Right now, my five year old is into telling me what all the road signs mean. Very cool at first, now he's a backseat driver lol! Telling me to slow down, what the speed limit is or that an intersection is coming up!

[cheery]

Very cool at first, now he's a backseat driver lol!

yeah ... same here. Whenever we are carpooling I have to warn people that we have the traffic police right in the back seat.

reading the stories here reminds me of a time before we realized dd could read, a computer arrived and she referred to it as the "Dell Computer." We asked her, "how did you know it was a Dell Computer?" I thought maybe she recognized the logo or something. She said, "It says on the box, D - E - L - L "