Posted by gwendolyn on June 19, 2002 at 08:08 PM

Have you ever looked back on your recent past (like within the last six months) and said to yourself..."What the hell was I thinking? I must have been smokin' crack." I am shocked and amazed by how many times I say that to myself. This particular instance involves sitting today admiring Savannah's fascination with her Leap Pad and the books that go with it. I had nearly put the two Leap Pads in the donation pile. Had I not dropped a large chunk of money on them they would be gone.

I was under some false impression that it was doing horrible developmental damage. I was playing by someone else’s beliefs that I thought much wiser and knowledgeable than mine. It turns out they are just following someone else's beliefs also. Thankfully, I have had to decide what my own truths are. Someone else’s truths can only work if you follow them because you believe whole heartedly in them.

I look at some of the extreme changes I had made around here and think I must have been temporarily insane. I would be crazy to think that she (and all of them for that matter) was not getting a great deal of learning from the Leap Pads (and computers). Not having a complete grasp on reading doesn't hinder her ability or interest in using the pen with the read along feature. She feels like she is reading. She feels capable of putting the sight of the words to sounds and ideas. If nothing else, it is teaching her the basis of whole language skills. It is showing her that what she does know already is a very interesting and important part of a whole bigger thing.

As much as I have gravitated toward teaching her phonics first, simply because that is the way I learned, I realize there is more than one way to learn as well as to teach. I believe this is true with all things. I have read the pros and cons of each of those two methods of teaching reading. My understanding is that most people either go strictly one way or the other on this issue. I once again am steering down the middle of that road taking advantage of whichever parts of each method work at the moment. Actually, I am not really doing the steering at all. I am more or less holding on for dear life and trying to back seat drive while she is stomping it to the floor and making the tires squeal.

My belief is that she will read however she decides to figure it out. I honestly don't put much stock into the teaching portion of it. You can "teach", "tell" and "show" them how to read until your face turns blue. This is good. If it makes you feel like you are doing things right. If you feel obligated to explain how you learned then it might be one way of your child looking at it. It will definitely help them along to have someone to guide them. However, It doesn't mean that they will take the information you give them and just apply it and understand it and instantly be readers. Until that very moment when that little light bulb blinks on in the child's mind... when all of a sudden all of those letters from the alphabet that make those sounds that begin all of those words we say everyday and that are on the really cute animal flashcards mom bought come together and make some sort of complete mental image with their sound and meaning so that they are recognized by the child when piled together, the child is not going to read.

Savannah has spent the last several months figuring that out. First she decided she wanted to recognize and memorize all the names of the letters. Then a few weeks later she decided to ask me five million times a day what letter makes what sound. (For those of you taking notes, this is the "teaching" portion.) Usually she would follow this up with pairing up that sound with words she knows that begin with that sound. Sometimes she would say "d-d-d-d- zebra". Sometimes the light bulb flickered and she made a match. She still hasn't mastered this but it is more of a fun game to her than trying to memorize some important fact. Lately, she has decided that these letters all pushed together into words aren't all that overwhelming and she has practiced what she has figured out about pushing together the sounds in order to figure out some easy words.

Mostly she just really wants to know what stuff says. She is a busy body. She wants to be able read what I am typing over my shoulder. It is her curiosity that is her greatest motivation. It isn't me sitting around drilling her. It is a stubborn urge to want to know what the cereal box says on the back. The same stubborn will that makes them rise up off the floor and crawl and then walk is what drives them to learn everything else. The same will that battles you over not wanting to eat certain foods. They just have to want it. Children are a lot smarter than some people think.

Why is it some children struggle with reading? I think it is because they have the pressure of meeting expectations. It is the insecurity of not really understanding something someone else thinks you ought to know. It is the same feeling that motivates mother's to ignore their maternal instincts and shove their children off to Kindergarten. Someone somewhere decided there is a proper measurement of time that a child is supposed to do everything.

Take a look at other forms of reading and comprehension. There is no set age for learning to read music. No one declares that a child of a certain age is ready to take up music and is abnormal if they don't. It is acceptable for someone to go through their entire life and not know how to read music. The ones who want to learn it do. When they are motivated to learn it. When it is important to them that they acquire that skill.

In my opinion, this not only applies to reading. It applies to everything. It is no wonder we all run around in our adult lives looking for someone else to give us all the right advice about anything and everything. We have never been permitted to trust ourselves enough to figure it out in our own time.