A Little (really exciting) Victory

If you've been reading here very long, you've seen that my 7 year old (who'll be 8 in February) can't read. At all. You'll also know that we're working on it, with guidance from the experts who tell us that he has a laundry list of things standing between him and literacy.  And you'll know that we see that list more like cones to drive around than a wall to scale; in other words, The Chemist and I don't really accept the possibility that The Adventurer might not ever learn to read. He will learn, and we'll help him on every step of the journey from here to literacy, however long it takes. Period.

This past weekend, we had a little, really big, victory in that arena and I just have to share it with you.

On Friday, The Adventurer asked for a book to be read to him over and over and over again. I read it to him once, and The Artist (his 12 yr old brother) read it to him two or three times, and The Adventurer laughed and giggled through every reading.

I noticed while I was reading, which happened to be the third reading of the day, that he was beginning to whisper the dialogue portions under his breath as I read them, anticipating the text just a bit.

Now, pretty much anyone who has ever read to a child, even one as young as three or four years old, knows that kids tend to memorize text when it is repetitive and predictable enough. Most children can, when being read a book like that, fill in the last word or two if the reader pauses and lets them. Think about Green Eggs & Ham --- everyone knows "I do not like them, Sam I Am!" comes at the end of just about every page. Even three and four year olds, once they've heard the book often enough, and they will gleefully say that phrase along with their parent, or instead of, if the parent stops and lets the child fill in the missing words. Nearly every parent on the planet knows this, has experienced it.

The Adventurer has never done that. Not once. In all his nearly eight years, he has never filled in a missing word, never completed the next line, never shouted out with glee "I do not like them, Sam I Am!" when I paused in reading Green Eggs & Ham to him. Never. Not with any book, even the ones that he has been read on a nearly daily basis.

To say that I was excited that he was now whispering the dialogue along with me......yea, that would be an understatement. I was pretty much giddy, but I tried not to show it and just kept reading. The Adventurer has the sort of personality that, if you cheer for him too soon over something he's still unsure of, he'll stop doing it. So, I kept a poker face (more or less) and just finished the story.

But that is not the end. What happened on Saturday is what really excited me. 

We were in the car, heading out for dinner. The Adventurer piped up from the back seat that "if we had a fat cat, and a pet rat, and a mat, and a crazy broom, that would be a recipe for trouble!"  and continued on to explain to his father, The Chemist, that he knows this because of the book from Friday; the back of the book clearly states that if you have a fat cat, a pet rat, a mat and a crazy broom, then you have a recipe for trouble.

I stifled a grin as I listened to him quote this, and then stifled a few laughs as he went on to explain that it really should be a fat and lazy cat, even though the book doesn't say lazy. And definitely it has to be a pet rat, not just an ordinary rat. And a crazy broom, not a normal broom. And then.....then he asked his dad, "Do you want to hear the book, Dad?"

When The Chemist answered, "Sure," The Adventurer went on to quote the story. 

Not summarize. Not just a word here and there. The entire story, the repetitive dialogue of each character (a rat, a bat, a hat, a cat, and a witch). In order. Getting every line right, each time. Beginning to end, with voice inflection and everything, just the way it had been read to him the day before.

I did not stifle that grin, did not even try to. I did hold back the tears, just barely. I did not hold back the praise; confident that he was confident, I said as nonchalantly as I could that I was proud of him, that he did a great  job remembering the story and telling it to Daddy. The Adventurer confessed he skipped a part (he did); I told him that was okay. He moved on to other topics of conversation, and I just kept smiling.

No, he's not reading yet. No, the fact he can memorize a story does not mean he'll be reading next week. But it does mean that the work we're doing is working. A skill that he simply couldn't do in the past, mastered. Progress. Hope. Proof that he can do this. And for that, I couldn't be happier.