Teaching Max to Read

I'm going to start this post with a caveat: My seven-year-old is not yet a fluent reader. If you're looking for advice on how to teach your child to read, you should probably look elsewhere. This post is about my journey through a lot of stress and worry toward a deeper understanding of my son as an individual, and child development in general.

I started homeschooling when Max was in preschool and I had only one other child.  We did all kinds of crafts and activities whenever Lucian was sleeping, and I felt like Supermom. My son was four and had listened to the Hobbit, knew the body systems, and loved books with a passion. We tried a little reading practice but he wasn't interested, so I set it aside. Thomas Jefferson Education, which has been the main education philosophy that I follow, stresses that academic subjects are not important until around age eight. Eight! I told this confidently to everyone I knew, but in my heart I was sure that my son would be reading well before age eight. I was a super early reader, and I always equated early reading with intelligence. Of course my kids would be just like me!

In Kindergarten we kept up the same basic routine, but I was starting to feel a little pressure to work harder on reading. I had another baby and less time to work with Max, plus his interest in reading was still zero. It was causing stress in our relationship, so I took the sage advice of my mentor Annie, who suggested that I set my reading goals aside for a month and learn about what he loves. His time to read will come, she said. So I did, and he learned about the periodic table of elements instead. When I wasn't watching he picked up on all of his letter sounds and learned to write his capital letters. Instead of rejoicing in his successes, I worried that he didn't know all of his lowercase letters. But I kept in mind what my friend Annie said and I waited.

Then the summer before first grade came. I was listening to many of my friends talk about what their children would be learning in preschool and kindergarten and I started freaking out. My son was six and he still had no interest in reading. Never mind that he knew all of his letter sounds and could sound out many simple words, I wanted my son to be reading like everyone else! I didn't want him to be behind, but I was also feeling the pressure to show everyone that I could do this. I wanted to prove homeschooling. I sat down that first day of first grade, determined to teach him to read... and it just about ruined our year. Out the window had gone everything I believed in about developmental readiness and inspiration. I wanted my kid to be "normal".

After a week of insanity, I came around and remembered why I decided to homeschool in the first place. I wanted my son to have an education that did not revolve around other people telling him what to do and when to do it. I wanted him to love learning. I went back to the drawing board and revised my plan for the year. We were going to do what we had been doing for the last two years, learning what we wanted to learn at the pace my kids wanted to learn it. I got more creative about introducing literacy and math concepts, and when I got blank stares or antsy squirms I stopped.

More than halfway through the year now, we have started to make some real progress. After trying four different reading programs, we ended up back at the first one we ever tried, three years ago. It was a train wreck at age four but now Max loves it, because now he's ready for it. I know that this story is not done being written yet. We will probably still have some setbacks before he is a confident reader, and I will likely have plenty more moments of worry and doubt. But I am beginning to trust that learning happens in its own time. My son's pace is not my pace, and that is ok.