Let’s Read. It Might Be Fun

My daughter is reading.  The “Bob” books are her favorite.  I offer her Dick and Jane, Dr. Seuss, she shakes her head and reads about animals named Mitt and Mac.

My daughter is bright.  I’ve known this ever since before she could talk and it was just her sparkly eyes staring up at me.  She is wise for a six year old, mature in ways that startle me.

Colors, shapes, sounds, they all came easily to her.  Even the letters danced for her.  But maybe that was the problem.  They kept dancing, so that lining them up became a challenge and making sense of them a chore.

“Let’s read,”  I would offer her innocently.  She would climb into my lap, a book in hand.

“You start,”  I would say.  And she would shake her head no.

In this family, reading is everything.  I didn’t fight her because reading isn’t bad and shouldn’t come with tears.  So, we’ve been going at her own pace.

She’d rather listen to her books on tape or sit on my lap and hear the same story over again.  That’s ok.  She loves books, stories about boys and girls and animals.  The story has never been the issue.  It’s those letters and their habit of not quite standing still the way they should.

It looks like they’re starting to behave, though.  I find her sitting with a book, a “Bob” book, reading to herself.  She wants to read to me, too.  Maybe she finally tamed them or maybe it was just time for the letters to stop dancing and sit still for her.