Learning to write

My brother learned to read mostly over one Christmas vacation, during which he went from the lowest reading group to the highest one in his second-grade class. Another homeschooled girl I met didn't start reading until she was 7, but over roughly a six month period she accelerated to 3rd grade reading level. John Gatto says he learned to read because his grandmother read to him every day while he sat in her lap, and she ran her finger along under the words. But because there is no room for differing timelines in institutional schooling, learning to read is perceived as a difficult and somewhat mysterious process. Nor can anyone agree on the "right" or "best" way to teach reading, which, if you're following your child's lead on a day-to-day basis, is a moot debate.

A. is going about things in quite a different way, for instance. She is not learning to read, she is learning to write. Every day she makes signs to place around the house. Yesterday she pretended that Bratty Brat (an imaginary friend/enemy) had stolen her cat Cherry, and asked me how to spell the name of our street and the word "LOST," which she wrote beneath drawings of cats on various signs. She probably spelled LOST and CLOVER DR a half dozen times. This is also how she learned to spell our names, the words Mom and Dad, Cherry, Harry Potter, and various menu items for when she plays restaurant. And she'll happily get out the letter blocks and we'll construct words and sentences.

But read what someone else wrote? What's the point in that? Sure, it's fun to pick out a word here or there on rare occasions, but that's just for kicks. The important thing, to A's mind, is to be able to express herself. Writing a story is a goal; reading someone else's story is not.

This doesn't surprise me, because A. seems to be a natural unschooler. I tried to talk her into swimming lessons this summer, and she told me that she already knows how to swim, and if she wants to swim better she will ask me how, and that she doesn't want anyone "telling me how to do it," as she put it. Ms. Independence. Similarly gymnastics classes are out, since, as she explained, she already knows how to do somersaults, stand on one leg, walk on a log, jump, dance, and fly (she swears she's getting better at jumping and eventually she'll be able to fly). Anyway, I can still do cartwheels, so A. says I can teach her-- but only when she asks me to.

So this will be the story I'll tell in a few years: "Oh, A?" I'll say. "She learned to write around age 5 or 6... reading didn't come until a couple of years later."