Natalie has been interested in reading for a while, trying to guess at words and sounding them out, but I had made no effort to formally sit down with her and teach her. I had tried with Kaitlin when she was four and five, but she had no interest then, and it proved kind of a frustrating endeavor so I was not eager to go through the experience with Natalie. However, several months ago we brought out these great little
BOB Books published by Scholastic that we had saved and let her play with them. After one unsuccessful reading session, I decided to let it go and let her teachers at school worry about teaching her to read, but Joel, who has a little more patience than me, spent some time with her helping her read them, and she got it! She has loved reading them for a couple of months now. During Thanksgiving, she read several of them to her grandparents. It makes her so proud!
For Christmas Joel got her the next set of books, and the other day she lined them all up in the floor and started reading each one out loud to us (much to Kaitlin’s chagrin). It was such a cute scene, I of course had to grab my camera and when she saw me taking pictures, she asked that I take a video of her reading one. She is so proud of her reading accomplishments! I am big enough to read, she says.
Am I Big Enough? She asks this every time she gets to do something the older kids have been doing. When she turned four and I told her she now could join the children’s choir and the Little Lamb’s club at church if she wanted, she just could not believe it! Are you sure I am big enough, mom? Sometimes I worry she is going to develop what they call “Second Child Syndrome” because I am not exposing her to as many experiences as I exposed Kaitlin at this age or have the same expectations I had of Kaitlin. By the time Kaitlin was three, the poor child was enrolled in swimming, gymnastics, ballet and had endured several performances in church. She was also used to being micro-managed by her type-A mother.
With Natalie, I have taken things a little bit easier. I left her an extra year in the Cradle Roll Sabbath classroom at church, did not sign her up for any extracurricular activities until just recently, and did not even think of enrolling her in Pre-K when she turned four. Of course, I have to give a lot of credit to the excellent babysitter Natalie had prior to starting school. This woman did a wonderful job of teaching Natalie and taking care of her in a very relaxed and soothing environment. I am forever indebted to her. At the same time I think Natalie is also benefiting from having a less neurotic mom (I wonder if my husband would agree) that is less worried about hitting all the milestones at the “normal” age. Natalie has a mother now that has learned to live more in the moment and enjoy her little girl. Her baby.
