My oldest son was a delayed talker. (A detail that you may remember from virtually every story I posted between 2019 and 2021.) The ordeal felt interminable at the time — and it somehow feels even longer in retrospect.
However, while teaching Borealis to speak was painfully slow-going, teaching him to read was quite the opposite. By the time he could verbally communicate, he already knew all of his letters — and even some simple words, too.
Thus, during the summer before his first year of preschool, I officially undertook the endeavor of cultivating his literacy. Admittedly, we had some struggles — since, you know, he was still only *three* — but I nevertheless found my son to be an extremely self-motivated and effective learner. Somewhat ironically, he mastered reading before he overcame thumb-sucking — and these days, his own literary appetite is all the educational motivation he requires.
Australis, on the other hand… has *not* had the same experience.
When Borealis went off to kindergarten, I decided it was high time that my daughter start learning how to read. I planned to begin in the same way as I had with Bo — by introducing a few sight words at a time, then working up to more complex phonetic decoding.
However, when I tried this approach with Aza, I quickly discovered my error in judgment.
“Ok, what word is this?” I prompted, pointing to “the”.
“I don’t know,” she sighed, gazing off into middle distance.
“Come on, Aza — it’s one of your sight words. It’s the one that starts with ‘t’.”
My daughter gazed up at me with innocent blue eyes and exclaimed, “But I don’t know my letters yet!”
To my dismay, I realized that she *wasn’t* exaggerating.
I immediately got out our alphabet blocks to assess her dearth of knowledge. Alas — so many letter names eluded her grasp.
Ah, the curse of the secondborn. We naturally assume that she’ll learn — via mental osmosis — the information that her older brother already knows. However, that hope had clearly not come to pass with regard to the alphabet.
Not for lack of confidence, though — when asked about a letter, Aza *always* gave an answer. Just… it was usually the wrong answer. Like, really wrong. As in, guessing C for W, or X for P.
“Those don’t even look alike!” I’d admonish. “Nor are they in the same part of the alphabet!”
Unfortunately, this reproof did little to change the reality of our situation: Aza simply did not know her letters.
What had worked for our son [i.e. undiagnosed hyperlexia] had clearly not worked for our daughter — so we needed a new, Aza-specific solution.
This solution came in the form of an unexpectedly effective carrot: Sharpie privileges.
As do I, Aza looooooves Sharpies — but, for obvious reasons, they’ve always been off-limits for her. (Serial recklessness and permanent ink don’t mix well. Reference She Came in Like a Wrecking Ball for a [still applicable] portrait of my daughter’s general behavior.)
But even though — or, perhaps, because — these markers are restricted, nothing else will satisfy Aza’s skritchy-scratchy appetite. This means that the opportunity to use a Sharpie is irresistibly tantalizing for my daughter — even if it means that she accidentally learns something.
Here was the set-up. On the inside of a cereal box (or other piece of cardboard), I used a pencil to write out all the letters in their respective big-and-little pairs. Then, after bequeathing the coveted Sharpie to Aza, I instructed her to name and trace each letter. She frequently requested my help in the first task… but she needed no assistance with the second. Her tracing skills far outstripped her letter-naming skills.
Thus, slowly but surely — and practically against her will — Australis began learning her letters.
Well…sort of. Strangely enough, she continued to struggle with the letters’ names — even after she mastered their shapes and order.
Here’s a representative example. While pondering an alphabet block “Y”, my daughter screwed up her eyes and sang, “A-B-C-D-E-F-G, H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P. Q-R-S, T-U-V, W-X, Y — oh, it’s Y!” Likewise, while deciphering an “F”, she mused, “Hmm… it’s the one after ‘E’: A-B-C-D-E-F — it’s F!”
Thankfully, each of these diagnoses was correct — but it’s not exactly convenient to sing the alphabet to identify each letter in a word. Rather, it seemed to portend a lengthy and arduous road to reading. (And, not necessarily a successful one.)
Unfortunately, however, the only path forward was through. Thus, we continued with our tracing activities, periodically interspersed with flashcards and blocks.
Progress was slow — soooooooo slow. Even so, over weeks and months of practice, Aza began petitioning my help less and less. Eventually — to my delight — it became clear that she had, in fact, learned all her letters: she could identify each one immediately, on the first try. (And, perhaps most importantly, without singing.)
This was a welcome development — but while necessary, it was still insufficient. Letters are truly just a means to an end: until they are compiled into decodable words, letters are per se virtually meaningless.
Thus, we moved on to the actual end of letters: namely, reading.
After introducing this shift in our aim, I began holding my daughter accountable for a few sight words — just “a”, “the”, and “and” at first, but slowly adding on “an”, “I”, “you”, etc.
And she correctly identified those words… most of the time. However, I strongly suspected that, rather than working from an acquired knowledge of each word, Aza was instead operating from a good memory and clever evaluation of context clues.
Put another way: she wasn’t reading; she was guessing.
For example, consider the prompt, “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do… <blank>”.
What comes next?
Well, if you’ve ever read the book before — ever — then you know the next word is “you”: “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?”
In fact, that book is chockfull of nearly identical prompts that are easy to complete — even without *actually* reading. You just have to guess well.
And this, in fact, is what I assumed of Australis. She usually guessed logically — like, in a grammatically consistent manner — but she *didn’t* always guess correctly.
[Note: This happened quite frequently with “a” and “the” — since, in a given context, both articles typically make grammatical sense.]
Thus, after a few months of this phantom progress, I practically despaired of ever teaching my daughter to read.
“I guess she’ll just learn to listen for context clues really well,” I defeatedly complained to Taylor.
“No, she’ll eventually get it,” he encouraged. “One day, it’ll click for her, and she’ll realize that she actually wants, you know, to… um….”
“Have permanent intellectual ownership of each word?” I suggested.
Taylor: <grunts grudgingly> “Well, *I* would never say it like that. But that’s basically the idea.”
And so, we persevered: me, prompting my daughter to read each relevant sight word; and Aza, guessing shrewdly while diligently ignoring the actual letters on the page. My complaint to Taylor still seemed well-founded.
… Until one night, quite recently. I had our newest kids’ Bible open on my lap, and Borealis and Australis had snuggled in beside me. [Note: Their combined weight of eighty pounds has rendered this activity increasingly difficult.] Rhys had wandered out of the room, presumably to go find Taylor.
“Ok, we’re going to pray now,” I directed. I closed my eyes and began, “Dear Heavenly Father —”
“God!” Aza interrupted.
“Yes,” I affirmed, cracking open one eye. “God is our heavenly Father.”
“No — God!” Aza repeated. This time, I could see that she was pointing to the open page — to the title that read, God Tests Abraham.
“‘God’,” she said once more. “It’s that word.”
A smiled bloomed across my face. “Yes it is, baby girl. That is the word ‘God’.”
[Author’s Note: That moment proved to me that Aza is actually capable of learning how to *read* — not solely how to *guess well*.
Even so, things are still pretty slow-going. She’s mastered a few additional words, and she’s increasingly shown interest in gaining literacy — but, as with letters, so with words.
Once again, the only way forward… is through.]