It happened today. What happened? Well...
The kids and I are at my parents' house for the weekend. It's a two and a half hour drive so before we left the kids gathered up some stuff to take with them for the ride. We got on the way and about 20 minutes into the trip Catherine asked if I could turn off the radio.
"Why?"
"I'm trying to read"
I glanced back and sure enough she was reading a Pokemon comic book.
Fireworks went off in my brain. My heart exploded. Chubby naked angels were doing touchdown dances in my head. She's reading on her own initiative and for her own enjoyment! Whoo hoo!
It's been so strange because I read before I went to school and books were my constant companion in childhood. But both my kids have been pretty slow in that department. Not because of any innate problems but simply because the skill of reading is something I can wait for and they've either had other interests to explore (Harry and trains) or there were alternate ways to interact with books (me reading and a good collection of audio books). Certainly not reading hasn't hampered Catherine's literacy skills (if we can think of that as something wider than just reading). Not many 9 year olds know who Hector was and just how many times his poor corpse was dragged around the walls of Troy.
But she's reading now. Really reading to feed her own interest. And I'm so happy.
4 comments:
Having a reluctant reader here, I can totally understand the chubby naked angels ;-)
Awesome! :-)
Thats fantastic :o) Xxx
Yay!!!
My son reads in the backseat, sometimes to himself, but usually aloud to his sisters. This is great until an awesome song comes on the radio, and I can't turn it up ;)
She could be like Michael perhaps, he reads only what interests him. He has no use for novels or fiction, unless it's specifically related to something he loves i.e. Clifford, Pokemon, Andrew Lost (cuz of science content) over the years. With him I buy science magazines as his reading material (Yes Mag, Know Mag, hopefully some Corus mags in the future), kid and adult reference books on science, and let him surf Wikipedia science stuff. He will take a Box Car Children book for example, and "skip the boring stuff", skipping 20 or 30 pages at a time, has no use for long drawn out passages. He also likes comics and Rin Tin type books (which I hate! Too violent!). Hope on the other hand can read four scholastic novels a day and love it, staying up til the wee hours, just be entertained and taken to fantasy land. Funny huh? I used to consider her just a "utility reader" and him the intense reader, now it's the other way around. Anyway, glad to hear the cherubs called :-)
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