Finding Joy in Snarkville

I’ve been a wee bit quiet on the education front of my wee off-spring.  Oh sure, Duke is surely being educated, but I’ve been quiet because I really have a fear of the competition.  Frankly, I don’t want to hear that your wee one was conjugating Latin verbs at 3.  While that might be fine for you, I don’t care and I refuse to feel that I’m in a battle of who’s the better mommy.

Then there was tonight.  I decided last night to sit down and make a real effort to read a non-picture book for bedtime.  I decided to read A Bear Called Paddington.  Prince and I purchased this book for Duke in London years ago.  I’m pretty sure we got it when we were there and I was pregnant with him, but it could have been the time the three of us were in London the first time.  I have never read this book to Duke*.

So, last night I curled up on his bed and endured the complaints about the lack of photos and we began to read.  Now, I’ve noticed lately that Duke’s comprehension of the stories is getting really strong (he had a real physical reaction to the Giving Tree — sadness–and I nearly cried myself watching him empathized with a tree) and he was paying attention**.  A page in his “reading finger” came out and pointed to the words as I read them.  Slowly, I would pause on words I was pretty sure he’d know.  The first one was “Brown” (and in Mr. & Mrs. Brown), then came another and another.  Sight words mostly, but seriously many more words than I thought he knew.

As we read that first chapter, he would read a few words here and there.  At the end of the chapter (and trust me those chapters are LONG if you are reading them with a reading finger and one word at a time), I hugged him and told him what a good job reading he is doing.  And I promptly didn’t think about it again, until Chapter 2.

Tonight, he declared that he could read some of the words.  He would follow along closely with the book and if I read a word he knew, he’d make me back up so he could read it.  I have a mental tally of the words I’m not allowed to read — much like I used to have a mental tally of the words he could say, until the number got too great for me to count.  He sounded out a few words he wasn’t clear on, but he wasn’t guessing.  He knows the words.

I have goose bumps because I know he is peeking in the lock of a whole new world.  I can see how excited he is that he can read and wants to do it himself.  He is didn’t want to stop though he was so tired he would lay down between his words (even if they were next to each other).  I so remember when he began to speak and the three words he knew turned into sentences and suddenly he didn’t stop talking.  We have stood on the edge of this leap for a long time and finally, I’m watching the words come together.

*This is important because Duke has an amazing memory.  He can hear a book once and just know the words.  It will appear he is reading it, but sadly, it is all memory with the pictures as a reminder.  I know this is why he has picked up so many sight words so fast.

** The moment I knew he was into the book was when Paddington laments that his name is too hard to say in English.  Duke’s great response was “bummer.”

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 10:24 pm and is filed under This Child of Mine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.