You can lead a horse to water...

From the moment my husband and I found out we were going to have a baby, to whom I'll refer as K-razy from here on out, I was stalking children's bookstores more than the local baby fashion boutiques. A "little birdie" told the staff at my school to throw me a Caldecott medal baby shower. Let's just say, I was going to force literacy onto my baby by reading Chaucer to my bellybutton, whether she liked it or not!


By two years old (going on 21), K-Razy had determined that she could do everything-- from putting on her own underwear to walking our 86-pound, crazy-eyed Rottweiler/Weimaraner mix--"ALL BY MYSELF, MOMMY!" She has LOVED being read to, and would employ all of her toddler wiles to sneak just one more book into the bedtime routine. However, when I tried to throw in a structured letter identification activity, she would wander away. There were kids in her class that were recognizing and "writing" letters in her classroom, and I decided that I just had to keep pushing until it would sink it, darn it! Cut from the same cloth as her mother, she responded to my efforts with a casual "I don't know" or sometimes a cheeky "You tell me, Mommy."


That was then, this is now. She is 3.5 and still going on 21, but something has changed. She loves to find letters on signs, in book titles, on food containers, and more, and she recently started penning (or chalking) a few letters on her own accord. Though I attribute the bulk of this one-eighty to the amazing educators at her pre-school and to my husband's impressive vocabulary, I am also going to pat myself on the back for doing the hardest thing of all--backing off!


After one too many looks that clearly communicated, "Mommy, I have something better to do right now," I realized something as a mother that I've known for 12 years as a teacher--meet children where they are, and they'll let you know when they're ready for the next step. As much as we like to think we're the leaders--especially those of us who are self-designated control freaks--we are, without question or argument, the followers in many ways when it comes to children's readiness for literacy learning. Force the proverbial water on them too early, and they'll refuse to drink it!


But how do you find the sweet spot, when they're ready to go along with your inexplicable excitement to sort scrabble tiles by letter and count them? And, how do you encourage it to come around? Well, here's the good news: You've already laid the groundwork for this by...
*reading to your child and talking about the book with him/her while reading
*singing songs or nursery rhymes with your child
*conversing with your child
*listening to your child carefully when he/she speaks
*in-the moment modeling observation of letters and numbers around them


THE BIG IDEA HERE: Show him/her you value books and language (especially his/hers) by engaging in reading and other language experiences as a regular part of the way you do things in your family. If you do this, most children will find their way toward language and literacy naturally, and in their own time. No Chaucer, no Shakespeare required. Period. (A relief, I'm sure, to the iambic pentameter-ly challenged!).


When it is your child, and not you, who takes the lead in many of the bulleted points above, you've got a kid who's revving his/her engines to go down the reading road. Okay, well, maybe not as far as revving their engines. Maybe waxing the car and filling the tires with air (it's a long process-- story for another post:).


Many of you out there have babies in Bumpos or kindergarteners already reading some words. No matter what level your child is at with literacy and language, the ideas expressed in this post are still important to hold onto. They'll keep you grounded and remind you that you can't force learning. If you do, you might only succeed in putting it off.

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So, the thing is, I can't sleep. One would assume that being a first grade teacher and a mother to a feisty 3-year-old would render me unconscious at a level on par with an overdose of Benadryl Allergy. On the contrary, this combo is the very thing that keeps me awake, gears turning, at 2 a.m., mentally outlining early literacy activities that will engage my little learner and magically transform her into the reading wunderkind I just know she dreams of becoming...


Okay, as you can clearly see, I need you to save me--and my poor, unsuspecting child--from my teaching degrees, Type A personality, and best intentions. I hope that spreading my knowledge of early literacy strategies will diffuse some of the pressure I might otherwise put on my innocent offspring and just may give you an idea or two to use with your own future readers. At minimum, maybe blogging will keep me from Googling 24-hour A.C. Moore locations in the greater Boston area in the wee hours of the morning!