Learning as we go…

1.     You know what’s right. You can see you daughter reading in many contexts. So she can read. She reads what she needs to.We can chat more about this in email if you want. But basically, I’d say dump the “level” readers, and just have stuff around that she likes to read (or have read to her). My 5 year old can read, but she never, ever reads out loud for me. I don’t think I ever made my 8 year old read for me either. How do I know they can read? Because, they pick up books, and look at them - a lot. How many words can they read? I dunno. Do they read all the words? I don’t think so. So reading has been easy for us because we don’t have expectations. What has been hard for us is behavior issues, where we do have expectations. Hubby and I struggle a lot with letting the kids learn their own way how to deal with anger, frustration, friendships, etc. If only I could take what I know about reading, and implement it when it comes to the kids yelling at each other cuz both of them want to play with something.I know intellectually what I should do, but my feelings and my own frustrations get in the way. Is that how it is for you and your daughter’s reading? Comment by Tammy Takahashi — August 9, 2006 @ 12:52 pm

2.     It’s fear. I do fear that if I did get sick or something happens to me and she had to go to school (which she does not want to do at all!)that it would be really hard on her.She likes the level readers, I think…when she wants to read. If I didnt have the fear, I could more easily let go. I see movement, slow but seemingly steady movement. I would love to let this go!Hearing your experience helps. Thank you. As for behavior issues here, (dont know what its like for you all), I do set my personal boundaries and have had to set them for the kids when they cant set their own and are struggling with a solution. I try to do so with the mindset of empowering them, not takin over; but there is always room for personal review on my part! I look at it more like boundaries and the way I want to be treated etc. Not sure if that is what you are talking about or not. At one point I miscontrued letting my kids learn their own way with not setting boundaries. Comment by learning — August 9, 2006 @ 1:15 pm

3.     You know my kids didn’t read until 9 and I was teaching them phonics. This taught me something: it will come in its own good time. I know someone who did things the way you are doing it, and at 10 her son started reading and he’s been reading ever since. His favorite magazine is Astronomy today. And he writes funny stories and she never taught him writing either.At some point your dd may need help with spelling. Not everyone gets that naturally, it seems to me. But you don’t have to worry about it at 9.Just my 2 cents!Faith Comment by dumboxacademy — August 9, 2006 @ 2:05 pm

4.     Thank you for your 2 cents, Faith. That helps so much! Comment by learning — August 9, 2006 @ 3:27 pm

5.     Hmmm … I don’t know what all the issues are with your girl.
(You mentioned some behavior concerns?) And I am certainly not knowledgeable about reading disabilities. However, I have read about many “normal” kids who didn’t read until 9, 10, or later (including the gifted children’s book author and illustrator Patricia Polacco). I agree that this might be connected with her being a “right brained learner.” Reading is very sequential, logical and - of course - verbal: a “left brained learner’s” forte. If she is a person who sees the whole rather than the parts, thinks in pictures and concepts, and is richly imaginative and creative … well, it makes sense.I agree with the first commenter. I would junk the easy readers, unless she enjoys them. My son was actually discouraged from reading by the easy readers I presented him (at least that’s my theory). “Why learn to read if it opens the door to such boring stuff?” *Laugh* The thing that made it “click” for him was collections of Calvin and Hobbes comics. Your daughter will find something that works for her. It does sound to me like she’s going through all the appropriate stages in developing reading and writing skills, just at her own pace. By the way, there is nothing sacred about learning to read around age 6. Countries like Sweden, whose literacy rates far exceed ours, don’t teach students reading until age 8 or so, *because that is believed to be the right time developmentally.* Our society is hung up on doing everything early. When your girl is in college, it will not matter whether she learned to read at 5, 8, or 11. It will matter that she has developed a love of books and learning. Just my humble opinion.Hope this helps a little. Comment by momof3feistykids — August 9, 2006 @ 5:20 pm

6.     No issues really or behavior problems. I do enjoy so much her process. She likes the content of the readers (scholastic) enough (but probably not that much…)We usually read alot of books together…I read, and she really enjoys that. She just doesnt want to read herself that often. She has so many interests, but none has led her to reading except while playing computer games. I really need to let my fears go because it seems that even if we forced phonics and reading out loud, it won’t click until its ready to click…I do not care when she learns to read “proficiently” (and I have problems with that word). I am concerned that she might not be prepared today if she needed to be is something happened to me as I have had physical problems lately. But I cant live in that. Thanks for your help.:-) Comment by learning — August 9, 2006 @ 9:16 pm

7.     Here’s some of my random thoughts on your topic . . .First, I would try to release the worry about what would happen to her reading-wise if something were to happen to you and she had to go back to school. School can’t force reading any more than you can, but they sure can label What you’ve done is “bought her time” in that she would be more apt to be ready if the time ever came for the worse case scenario than 2-3 years ago.Second, it was fun hearing about your dds process. And, yes, I recognize a right-brainer in her, and in the process. One thing that seemed to be what made me not worry about my “late readers” was that they were still so engaged in a learning process, even if it wasn’t the reading process. What I mean by that is, especially for my right-brainers, other things were at precedence than reading earlier than 8-10 years old. I saw them actively in the middle of that other particular learning right-brained “scope and sequence” for them.So, one was deeply in his drawing, imagination, creating visual stories through play, movie-making, and art. He was still heavily involved in books as a means for learning, just not from prolific independent reading. Another was deep in his Lego building, playing with numbers, trains, and the such. He still was connected with the book world through instructions, video games, and books such as “How Things Work” and visual science experiment books.This connection they each had to their own learning focus and constant engagement, and their own unique interconnection to the book world, somehow alleviated specific how-tos or timeframes for me. I’ve actually mulled this very thing over lately and need to ponder about it more and write something up about it.Anyway, it seems your dd is on her own learning focus, engagement, and interconnection with the book world. For some various right-brainer info: they often are sight word readers first (because they are whole to part learners); they often like visual-oriented materials as their preferred first readers such as comic books, manga, or a magazine of interest; and they often detest reading aloud (it doesn’t pull in their strength, which is visualization and skimming along the top of words to “catch the visual”).The only thing I ran into that I needed to carefully intervene with was one child was balking from his perfectionism. With the right bit of support, he jumped over that pitfall quickly. I’m not hearing that in your dd. The one piece of advice I might give you that might be of potential help in your dds case is to try to let go of the idea that reading is “progressive” . . . going from reader ones to reader twos, and she can’t move on until she “gets” each level (not that you were doing that, but maybe there is a silent implication). Most of my right-brainers wanted to read what they wanted to read, and because they were older readers, it makes sense it was older material, and they were content to be able to “read enough” to “catch that visual”.My oldest started reading “The Lost World” as his first book (about nine years old). When I saw him with it, I didn’t say much at first. Then, when he was about halfway through after not too many days, I asked him, “Are you understanding that?” He replied matter-of-factly, with his nose still in the book, “Enough.” I think that’s where reading aloud can come in handy. He really enjoyed read aloud time, and all that vocabulary (which was already a strength for him anyway) helps when you learn to read in a whole to part manner . . .Alright, this got long . . . sorry. Hope something helps
-Cindy Comment by applestars — August 9, 2006 @ 11:51 pm

8.     Oh. You wrapped this up nicely, Cindy. Thanks. Huh. OK. Got the idea with the progression, too. Implied has to be there. Huh. OK! Look forward to reading what you write up about this topic! Thank you so much everyone and to anyone else who might want to comment. It is *all* so helpful. I’ll save all of this. Thank you. Comment by learning — August 10, 2006 @ 12:02 am

9.     Oh, and you are right. Reading (together) is integral to all she does. I am just pleased to see the inventive spelling because there was a perfectionistic? tendendency to not try. I also see the reading over or skimming the top of words. That has kind of concerned me because I am afraid she is not focusing on the words, but it seems that she uses more than the word to read and needs to process whole words more than decipher parts.I also get the “enough” and that makes sense. My thinking has been that it will come together in time with exposure and with walking in language over time and repeatedly. OK! Feel better! Thanks for addressing the fear. Comment by learning — August 10, 2006 @ 12:10 am

10. A couple more things about your particular reading situation with your dd after reading your subsequent comments. We have been conditioned to believe “reading equals x”; in today’s world, it’s phonics and progressive reading. Somehow we believe that it is “cheating” to look at the pictures, or look for other cues (other context words) to decode the words. Instead, we can look closely at the conditioning and then look closer at our child, and their strengths and learning style, and recognize they are using their best strengths is all!Here’s an interesting idea for you to think about as you wrap your mind around a new way of viewing learning to read for your particular dd and her learning style. In autism, it can be common for our children to be great “decoders” insomuch that they can be hyperlexic, which means they can read any word you put in front of them, even at 2 or 3 years old. But . . . they don’t understand what they’re reading. One parent with a hyperlexic child asked me, “Does it matter that he doesn’t understand . . . he’s reading at college level?!” See how our conditioning skewed our thinking!? Ahhhh, yeah, I think it kinda matters if they know what they’re reading, otherwise, what’s the point of reading if not to gain information or entertainment, etc.?So, flip that around and if your dd can gain information or entertainment from reading, even if she “skims along the top”, using context clues or picture clues, isn’t that more important than reading outloud in perfect clarity and pronunciation? (By the way, she will eventually probably be able to do that, too. Both my late readers do!)Anyway, right-brainers read to get a picture, so it makes complete sense that their first choice of early readers are materials with pictures: comic books, manga, magazines, etc. These resources for early reading are simply a catalyst to helping them enjoy the refining process more because the conversion to pictures is shortened.Some thoughts and ideas for you to consider . . .
-Cindy Comment by Cindy — August 10, 2006 @ 3:50 pm

11. I wanted to share a bit about spelling and right-brainers . . . not to worry you, but to maybe give you some tools and strategies that you can share with your dd. Right-brainers are notorious bad spellers. My thought about it is this: because they are late readers, in their early writing attempts, invented spelling is employed and that visual of the spelling of that word is filed away in their highly visual brain. It is very hard for them to delete information from their brains.How you can possibly avoid this difficulty is to come up with a way that your child can spell words correctly, without a lot of effort, because right-brainers are often not known for their extra effort for such “stupid things.” In my oldest son’s instance, he always asked me to spell the words and so I did, without any lesson involved. His perfectionism, as you mention about your dd, played into his wanting to make sure he spelled “perfectly”, and luckily, he asked me. He’s a great speller. If she is not willing to do that, is she willing to create her own “picture dictionary”? Or use a picture dictionary? Another of my right-brainers loved picture dictionaries as a child, and is a great speller.Otherwise, you have to weigh the cost/benefits. With my third child, right-brainer, and even later reader, because of his high functioning autism, he had enough struggles with English to worry over spelling with him. He did invented spelling. He’s a poor speller, but it wasn’t worth pointing it out at the time because of other factors to consider. It might not be worth doing anything different with your dd as you recognize her perfectionism heavily involved and she found some confidence finally in using invented spelling. It’s not worth going backward on it by putting a light on the spelling. I simply throw this out there as information that you might be able to use somehow.In my third child’s case, we have found ways to remediate some of his spelling difficulties once he was fully through the learning process of reading and writing, etc., so that he was at a place to recognize his difficulty without perfectionistic complications and ready to figure out a way to make spelling make sense to his brain. He went from a horrid (I mean TRULY horrid speller) to a fair one now Who knows if his positive attitude toward it, and his desire, and persistence will eventually bring him to good or great?The final thing about spelling, though, is there are probably more poor spellers in this world than good ones, and with technology today, it isn’t that big a deal . . . in my opinion. (My dd is a writer, and she is a fair to good speller, after working out some of her own difficulties, but it doesn’t stop her from great writing!)Some more thoughts and ideas on spelling . . .
-Cindy Comment by Cindy — August 10, 2006 @ 4:06 pm

12. Cindy, thank you so much for your insights. You are a wealth of good information. I do see my dd as a “big picture” learner, and I see her learning to read in a non-linear way. This is obviously working for her. I also see what you are saying about spelling, and it will be a case of what will personally work in her situation. I think you are saying she could encode the wrong spelling since she is visually learning words as picture for the most part. This is good information to ponder. She does ask me to spell for her for the most part, and I write the words on paper for her to refer to. So that works. The inventive spelling is when she is involved in play that she includes writing in, such as writing doctors prescription, drawings with captions and so on. I think it is probably best to let her play and art be. I doubt she would go for a picture dictionary that she creates, but she might go for an actually dictionary with pics….I definitely see I’m on the right track with writing down the words for her to copy. I think the visual is better than me orally telling her how to spell. Thanks so much. Comment by learning — August 10, 2006