Day: January 17, 2008

Patches is the only person in our house who can’t read. He feels this distinction strongly and has been trying to work with letters and writing for months. I saw him wanting to read and write, but I was too busy to give him more than cursory help. Yesterday and today I sat down with him and we started working on reading. It made him so happy.

I have piles of early reading materials. I collected it all when I was working to teach Link to read. Reading did not come easily to Link. He needed lots of practice at very easy levels, but the stories were so simple that they quickly bored him. It was a very different experience teaching reading to Patches. With Link I cut each lesson in half because it was too much for him to take at once. With Patches I’m actually skipping material because I can tell that he’s already mastered it and doesn’t need to practice more.

I wore out on reading before Patches did. He sat down with a book and carefully learned all the words in it so that he could read it himself. But he wasn’t just memorizing, he was paying attention to each written word and matching it to a spoken word. This kid is going to be reading in no time at all if I just keep making time to work with him. I intend to keep making the time. This is what Patches needs right now.

We haven’t yet gotten comfortable with our shifted priorities and schedule. Not everything fits yet. Grocery shopping for example. I have to find a place to fit that in where it won’t disrupt some other important thing. The waiting until we run out of milk completely and then running to the store grumpy isn’t working well. Also going to the gym is physically exhausting, which changes what we’re capable of accomplishing during the rest of the day. My pace isn’t frantic or heavily stressed, but I do have to keep moving steadily all day to get things done. I’m hoping that habit will make everything work more smoothly, but we’re only two weeks in. We haven’t achieved habit yet.

Despite the kinks in the new schedule, I am filled with a sense that we’re on the right path. I feel strongly that we just need to stick with the new schedule and everything will turn out all right. I can already see shifts in the kids’ behaviors that are a reflection of the shifts that I’ve made. I’ve talked more with them about their lives in the last two weeks than I did during the months of October, November, and December combined. I’ve noticed that very little substitutes for proximity and availability.

I’ve learned that Kiki has been helping a friend deal with some girls who pick on her. Kiki also told me about an event in her German class where she got the approval of all of her peers by angling the teacher into letting them finish a movie. Link told me how he really likes his resource class because it gets him out of composition. He explained how writing is hard and math is easy. Gleek snuggled and cried over the fact that there was an assembly and she did not get picked to help demonstrate despite the fact that she was working her very hardest to be good. Patches revealed that he is upset and nervous about being in charge of the song for Family Home Evening next week. A little practice and talking eased his mind tremendously.

It is like they’ve got all these thoughts and stories and hurts balled up inside them and I’m slowly managing to pull them out. I can see the kids unclenching and relaxing into this new way of being. I am here for them in a way that I have not been for months and they are really glad. This is the right path. I can tell.

This afternoon Gleek climbed into my lap as I was browsing the lol cats at icanhascheezburger.com. She was instantly entranced with the amusing animals. I scrolled through the pictures so she could see them all. Then she started reading the words in the captions. At first she was thrown off by some of the odd spellings and pronunciations, but a couple of them had her giggling so hard that she nearly fell off my lap. She demanded to see all of them. We clicked through a couple of pages until my patience was wearing thin. There is only so much lol humor I can take in a single sitting.

In order to appease Gleek’s continuing demands for more, I printed out two of her favorites so that she could share them with her siblings. That was the first error. Gleek returned with Patches in tow. Then I had two kids demanding more lol cats. I printed out a third page to get them to let me work for awhile. That worked for a time. But shortly Gleek was back in my office. She had put the words of the captions to the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and now serenaded me with lol cat humor. All the kids thought this was the height of humor and cleverness. The song has been sung repeatedly throughout the afternoon. The show has even been taken on the road to perform for the neighbors.

Tonight at bedtime Gleek was making a plan to print out ALL of the lol cat pictures and sing them. We’re going to have an operatic length Ring of the Lol Cats.