A Love of Reading (or Thank you, Phonics)

When my daughter was small, I used to read to her every night before she went to bed, and off-n-on throughout the day. She loved listening to me read from her set of Disney books - Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc. One day I passed her bedroom and heard her reading her books to herself. She must have been about four, and I thought to myself "chip off the old block" because from all reports, I was doing the same thing around the same age. I was dancing inside. My incredibly bright child was reading! Hurray and Huzzah!

That night I had her read to me before she went to bed. She picked out her favorite and settled in next to me on her bed, and began reading away. Well, it sounded like she was reading anyway. After a few pages, I noticed she was 'reading' the next page before she turned to it.

The little minx had memorized the book. She had memorized ALL her books. And just to prove it to myself, I grabbed a book we hadn't read together very often and I had her read it to me. She tried. She managed to get some of the words because she had seen them so often they were memorized, but she couldn't grasp most of the other words. So she guessed at them.

I tried my best to make her sound out words, but that was hard, and it left her thoroughly disgusted with the whole enterprise of reading. This was exascerbated when she went to kindergarten, where she was encouraged to guess at words and congratulated when she got close. I tried to make her sound things out at home, and they encouraged her to guess at school. Hmmm. It doesn't take a brain surgeon (or even an ed major), to figure out which method she preferred.

This was all well and good for the first year. But by the middle of first grade, when the books she wanted to read were getting more difficult to guess at, she turned into a total hater of reading. Loathed it. Despised it. It was like pulling teeth to get her to pick up a book. Even a textbook. (Which would have shot her grades all to hell if her teachers at the time weren't of the mind that every child should be rewarded regardless of their work... But that's a post for another time.)

What finally turned her around was receiving a book as a gift. It was a book she couldn't guess at because the words were varied enough to make guessing difficult. But it was a book she desperately wanted to read. So, at the age of seven, she finally made the mental shift to try out this whole 'sounding words out' thing her mother had been so pushy about. And damned if it didn't work. (By the way, the book was the first Harry Potter... Thank you, Mom for the gift and thank you, J.K. Rowling for writing it.)

Phonics really does open a world of reading up for your children. And although learning phonics can be difficult, in the end it makes reading SO much easier, it's cruel to teach reading any other way.

And now? Well, now she's reading so many books I can't keep up. She's through with the Disney books, and even the Young Adult books. She's reading romances and science fiction and fantasy and mysteries just like any of us. And she's excelling in school.

Kinda makes you wonder why people ever tried any other method when phonics works so well.