Holly Dodd read late, and though it was frustrating a time or two, she read when she read. Before then, there were instances when it showed an advantageous side.

When Holly was nine she was in a play, and she wasn't reading yet. She was afraid she would not know her lines, so every day she got me to read through her scene, and she paid careful attention at rehearsals, and rehearsed with another family's kids. As it turned out, her inability to read along during rehearsals ended up being a boon. The following was posted on unschooling-dotcom@yahoogroups.com in April 2003:

If the homeschooler's theater has its performance set for May 10, and first rehearsal is April 1, an unschooler can see that it would be best to know their lines by then.

Holly learned all her lines early, since she couldn't read and needed help. As rehearsals went on, she learned everyone else's lines too. Since they were leaning on being able to read from scripts during rehearsals, they weren't memorizing their lines.

When the performance came two of the three main characters were Holly and her best friend, who knew their lines. The third didn't know his. A couple of times when it didn't matter, one of them said his line, and left the response to him. If he didn't catch it, the other of the girls would say the response. (Most of what they were doing was exposition or dialog that wasn't at all character specific.) If it made him mad, he didn't dare say so, because he didn't know his part.

But Holly was so disgusted with the others, she had no interest in the next play they offered.

That's too bad. Somehow she met deadlines TOO well?

Someone wrote:
"Having them learn to read was always a big one for me, since from there they can learn anything."

Someone else:
"People have always said that, and at one time it was probably more true than it is now."

Julie wrote:

I wanted to underscore this idea. Three of my five kids are late readers. My youngest still isn't a fluent reader at 9. She can sound words out painstakingly but often misses them. However, she is an amazingly observant person (because she doesn't read). Just yesterday we were working our way through an Arthur book that she wanted to try. She got tired and asked me to read it to her so I did. The first page said that the kids in school should line up alphabetically. I was reading the words, oblivious to the pictures. In fact, I almost never look at pictures when reading kids' books because the "real" meaning is in words, isn't it?

She stops me to say: Mom the artist didn't put the kids in alphabetical order. See? She started listing their names and sure enough, they were nowhere near alphabetical. She has handwritten the alphabet so often that she knows the order inside out. I got such a kick out of her making that correlation.

She figures stuff out all the time without knowing how to read based on visual cues that I routinely miss.

Also, she loves to write. She has notebooks filled with scrawl, then letters and now her own invented spelling. She writes! But can't read.

And another ironic bit. She has learned the entire Greek alphabet -both upper and lower case. Because she is not bound by English in the way fluent readers are, she is at ease with the Greek alphabet and writes all her friends' names in Greek phonetics.

The whole process of letting her learn to read without a program and without my worry or fear has been fascinating! She's a very aware, self-educated little missie and she hasn't read an entire book yet.

Btw, she also plays games on websites and figures out how to login, play the games and beat them without reading. I have NO idea how she manages. But I have a hunch her skill set will be much more diverse when she finally does read because of these years of patient observation and detective work.

Julie

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