I used a simple wooden board puzzle with numbers zero through nine to teach my oldest son, Matthew, the names of the numbers. He was two. I would hand him a number, tell him the name (“Five. This is five.”), and then help him put it in its spot on the board. The next time around I would hold up a number and say, “What’s this?”
“Five,” he would answer.
I figured I could do the same with Aurora when she was two. I sure tried.
I held up a number five, “What’s this, Aurora?”
She stared and stared. “Heart,” she replied.
I looked at the five. It did indeed have a little heart pattern across it.
“Yes, those are hearts, but what is the number?”
She looked briefly at my hand and then at the other numbers on the board. “So pretty,” she answered, pointing to a pink and yellow striped number one.
“Yes, it is. So pretty,” I sighed.
I was not upset. She obviously learned so differently than her brother. At age two she already noticed things that most people overlook. She was drawn to things that were colorful, beautiful, and full of light. I could see this might be a strength, but understanding that didn’t help me teach her the numbers.
After my ineptness in teaching Aurora her numbers, I naturally decided I was instead going to teach her to read. (I was young and idealistic, I know, but full of hope.) My approach to teaching children to read had not yet failed. We played lots of games with letters especially when they were in the tub where we had lots of foam letters that stuck to the side of the tub. I incorporated letter sounds into our everyday activities, pointing out things that start with each letter. And I read to them every night. Once they knew the letters and sounds, I started teaching them to put the sounds together. We did this with basic readers, but also with games. My favorite way to teach words was with playdough. We had a set of letter cookie cutters that we used to cut words into the playdough. I would cut a basic word like ‘bus’ and then help the child sound out the word. Aurora seemed to be catching on with the basic words, so I decided to grab some early level BOB books from the library.
My first attempt to read through a BOB book with Aurora was frustrating, but I did not despair. She was only four at this point. I am very aware that she was still very young and that some kids may not be ready to read until as old as eight. Still, I tried again the next night and the next. Two YEARS…YEARS! later with very little progress and I did start to despair. It would go something like this:
“Aurora…Aurora…Aurora,” I said, trying to get her attention. “Aurora, what’s this word? Let’s sound it out together. F-R-O-G. What does it say?”
“I don’t know,” she’d say.
“Can you sound it out?”
“F-R-O-G,” she said, focusing so hard on the sounds.
“So what does that say?”
“F-R-O-G,” she tried again.
“Yes. Let’s put it all together. FR-OG.”
“Frog. I’m done. Can you read to me now?”
“Sure. We can be done.”
I determined around the time that she started Kindergarten that she was just going to have to learn how to read and do math at school. She wasn’t learning well from me. I also started to wonder around this time if she maybe had some focus issues. This was very new to me. I am not exactly sure how I recognized it, but it was definitely while I was trying to teach her to read. It seemed as if she couldn’t remember all the sounds from the first sound, “F”, to the last sound, “G”, in FROG. Somewhere in there she forgot what sounds she had already made. And if she did manage to get through a sentence, she couldn’t remember from the first word to the last what she had already read. These worries sort of had to sit on the back burner for a while, however, because her behavior was becoming more and more out of control. I had just given birth to my fourth child and taking care of a baby, a toddler, and a very stubborn 5-year-old was wearing me thin. She did learn how to read at school in Kindergarten. She appeared to be a perfect little student. She learned quickly and was at the top of her class. She was well behaved and a friend to everyone. And then she would come home and become a raging crazy person. I knew I had to address her anger, yelling, and defiance before I could even think about the possible focus issues.