Seven Words

Hope. Excitement. Encouraging. Fear. Worry. Cautious joy.

Those are the seven words I'm feeling right now, because of these seven words:  cat, bat, rat, mat, sat, hat, pat.

My Adventurer read those seven words to me today. He didn't realize that's what he was doing, but he did it.

We reviewed letter sounds first. He again, still, said that the letter h makes the sound /j/, and that the letter d makes the sound /p/ or else /b/ or maybe /g/ as in girl. And that the letter l makes the sound /j/, except, no, wait, it makes /l/ as in lollipop.

He noticed, apparently for the first time for him, that both g and j make the sound /j/.

He spent a few moments after each letter repeating the sound over and over again, just to cement it in his mind before we moved on to the next letter.

Because he was doing so very well, I decided to try something. To show him that just as he can point to or touch individual tokens, or tap out the separate sounds of a word (such as pointer finger, middle finger, ring finger, each tapping the table in turn as you say the separate sounds of the word "cat" -- /c/ - /a/ - /t/), so too we could point to letters as we said the sounds.

We (I) laid out all the letter tiles, in order, a to z. Then I pulled down b, a, t. On purpose, because he has those letter sounds down pat, and because it would allow me to swap just that beginning letter and make lots of new words.

No sooner did I put b-a-t in front of him did he say, "/b/-/a/-/t/; /bat/"

"Yes! exactly!" I said. "And look, if we swap the b for a c, now what?"

"/cat/. Duh...."

Right! Now what?, I asked, as I swapped the c for an m.

Mat, dummy.

Exactly!

And so it went, all the way through all seven words, me swapping out just the one letter, correcting him for calling me names, him calling out the word almost before I moved my finger away from it.

I asked him, at the end, "Do you know what you just did? You read. Seven whole words. You read them!"

I forgot that he absolutely detests praise, particularly for things he is self conscious about.

He declared he didn't really do it; I told him the sounds. He argued that it was supposed to be impossible to teach him how to read. He defiantly protested that he didn't do anything, I told him the answer; and that all I did was tell him the sound, he could have, did, figure it out on his own and he didn't need me. He boasted he could have done it blindfolded, without my help. He spewed anger as he said if he did, in fact, read, then he already knew how and always had. That he didn't need me. And that it was impossible to teach him how to read.

Round and round in circles his protests chased one another, from pride & joy in his success, to embarrassment over the fact we were cheering such a seemingly small thing, to insecurity as he wondered if it was a valid success, since I did prompt him with the sounds of some of the initial letters, to fear over whether he really had done it, and whether it would still be easy tomorrow or if it would keep getting harder, back to wanting to feel joy for reading, and unsure if it counted, since I helped.

No, he didn't say any of that. He ranted and protested and down played and belittled, his usual defense mechanism when something like this happens. So I let him rant, and quietly said I as proud of him, and we moved on to math, and I moved on to the other seven words.

Hopeful. Excited. Encouraged. Fearful. Worried. Cautiously  joyful.

And these: Careful to let him see only the hope and joy and excitement; careful to only encourage. Today, he read seven words, and I will celebrate that, holding at bay the worry and fear over whether or not he'll still be able to read those same words tomorrow.

He read. Seven whole words. And I could not be more proud.