Sandra Dodd

http://www.todaywasamazing.com/2013/04/looks-matter.html

This link leads to a blog post by Heather Booth. I would have quoted from it, but it's good to see the picture first. I don't often bring a link, so I hope you'll trust me on this one. It's brief, but it's big.

While you're in there, if you're a blog-following kind of person, or you're new to unschooling and you love the ideas, or if you have an only child, or a child with medical problems, or you like hula hoops, you might want to subscribe to Heather's blog.

Sandra

Brandynn Stanford

Her realization is similar to one I had a few weeks ago with my 8 year old son and his wanting to read. He is not quite ready, but his friends and younger sister are reading, and so he is frustrated about that. I've encouraged him that it will come in time, when his body and mind are ready. That reading didn't click with his older brother until Robin was nearly 10. (Which was a couple of years after I gave up my failed attempts to "teach" him with the books that had "worked so well" for my oldest when she was 4.)

The kids were signing their names to cards for the grandparents. Gideon asked if he could do his name in mirror writing. I said sure! (A few years ago I would have discouraged him from doing that.) Off he went to the bathroom mirror.

He was so happy when he returned that it got me to thinking what other things would look like reversed. I grabbed the closest thing to me, a bag of cat food, and we went to explore.

We had such fun over the next twenty minutes sputtering, and stammering, and figuring out the silly words we saw. Gideon was belly laughing at the sound of the reversed words, and some of them were pretty hilarious. Some we'd repeat in Darth Vader voice because they sounded like Star Wars characters. But in the middle of our silliness I also noticed relief in him. He was seeing me - a Person Who Can Read - stumbling and halting and being utterly confused at times.

As I was trying to say doofeas yeldem, and woem xim, and noitirtun etelpmoc, I suddenly realized this must be what it's like for Gideon when he'd be trying and trying to figure out a word and I would offer the supposed-to-be-helpful, "Just sound it out." It was such a moment of clarity for me and I promised myself I would never burden another child with that phrase again. It was hard to sound those things out - my brain hurt. There was no "just" about it.

His interest in that spontaneous activity soon waned and we went on to other things, happy and worn out from laughing. But since that time I've noticed that his reading has skyrocketed. Somehow it took the pressure off and I didn't even know it would. Before, he would get upset the moment he couldn't pronounce a word, and had given up trying. Now he seeks out reading, and says words all different ways until he finds the one that's right.

Thank you for this list and the incredible conversations that take place here. It's helped me be more joyful and peaceful in my life. It's also helped me be better able to stop and consider how my kids might be seeing a situation, instead of living in the bubble of my own perspectives.

~ Brandynn


On Apr 3, 2013, at 10:14 AM, Sandra Dodd wrote:

> http://www.todaywasamazing.com/2013/04/looks-matter.html
>
> This link leads to a blog post by Heather Booth. I would have quoted from it, but it's good to see the picture first. I don't often bring a link, so I hope you'll trust me on this one. It's brief, but it's big.
>
> While you're in there, if you're a blog-following kind of person, or you're new to unschooling and you love the ideas, or if you have an only child, or a child with medical problems, or you like hula hoops, you might want to subscribe to Heather's blog.
>
> Sandra
>
> __._


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]