Wild Things

 

A very long reserve queue for this book at the local library, and deservedly so. Sally Rippin is well known as a children's and YA author, and I think might be the best-selling female writer for kids in the country. In latter years she has concentrated on lively, engaging books for early readers, which have been wildly successful.

Wild Things is a very different kind of book -- both a very personal memoir of her youngest son's struggles with literacy, and a survey of the educational research and resources available in this country to help (or hinder) people in a similar situation. Not surprisingly, this is a subject very close to my heart, as my elder daughter (a couple of years older than Sally's son, in this book called 'Sam') has gone through a very similar battle with dyslexia and is still, in her third year at university, fighting to access the support she needs. Like Sally, we suffered through nightly conflicts over reading, tried various tutoring and home-based reading programs (none of which really worked), and dealt with mental health issues, including (but not limited to) severe anxiety, panic attacks, depression and low self-esteem. It seems that 'Sam' might have settled on an alternative education pathway now, but reading about his self-blaming shame and his parents' guilt was really harrowing.

At the foundation of all this suffering lies an education system that is STILL not responsive to the best research, which shows that explicit, thorough phonics instruction in the first years of school is essential to give every child the best chance of mastering literacy skills. 'Whole reading,' which basically expects children to absorb reading and writing skills through osmosis. For some kids, that's enough; for others, it simply doesn't make sense. Reading is learning a code -- from letter symbols to sounds, more or less -- which it seems absurd to expect little kids to just pick up 'naturally.' It ain't natural!

In the end (as I'm sure I've already told you more than once) what worked for my daughter was a combination of LOTS of exposure to books in the form of reading aloud and audiobooks, and becoming so familiar with the Harry Potter books that when she grabbed a volume at the age of about eleven, she was able to decode it on her own. She's always been academically ambitious for herself, and she's doing really well at university, but she still finds reading exhausting, and listening to lectures exhausting -- what works for her is watching online, where she can stop the recording and take notes at her own pace (thank God for Covid lockdowns and online learning). But it's all very hard work for her, and it always will be. It would be great if she could actually get the note-taker that the university support office promised her last year, but it looks like it's not going to happen. I hope she's going to be okay, and I hope 'Sam' will be okay, and I hope all the kids who are still being let down by our educators and politicians and the inadequate teacher training and inadequate classroom resources, will all be okay.

EDIT to add that Sally Rippin was also a Third Culture Kid, and discusses her sense of not-belonging in a way that other TCKs will find very recognisable.

Please Look After This Bear

Alice has been reading Paddington Bear. She's now read the first three books in the series, a chapter a night, on our recently purchased Kindle, relishing and occasionally dreading the misadventures of the well-meaning, marmalade-loving, accident-prone bear from Peru.

Everyone said that the Kindle can make a huge difference for dyslexic readers, and they're right. The non-backlit screen of the basic version is not too contrast-y (I know that's not a word); the machine itself is light and easy to handle. Best of all, Alice can alter the size of the font, the spacing of the lines and even the font itself to her own preferences. In the past, she's given up on many books because the print is so small, the lines so close together, that deciphering the words is a real headache for her (literally).

The only problem is now: what to read next? Even the last Paddington volume was starting to get a little bit hard for her. The words had become slightly longer, the plots more convoluted, and she wasn't enjoying it quite so much. But I desperately want her to keep up the habit of reading every night; it's all too easy to derail her.

I had been hoping she could tackle 101 Dalmatians next, which is one of her all time favourite books, and very familiar, but it's not available on the Kindle. I've loaded up one of Lois Lowry's Anastasia books to try next, so we'll see how that goes. Lots of people have made helpful suggestions, which I will follow up. I was going to try Edward Eager's Half Magic, a favourite from my own childhood, but alas! Not available on e-book. Not yet, anyway.

Wish us luck -- any further suggestions will be gratefully received!

Ssh... Don't Tell Anyone, But...

Alice is reading a book.

I almost don't want to talk about it in case I put the mozz on it, but... She has been reading in bed every night for the last week or so, a chapter or two at a time. It's our old favourite, The 101 Dalmations, which I have read to the girls three or four times, so it is quite familiar. She says the words aren't jumping around as much as they used to; also that the old, yellowed paper makes reading easier, because the contrast between the white space and the print is less.

Last night she had a choice between staying up to watch TV, and going to bed and reading, and she went to bed with her book. Of course, being Alice, she won't tolerate any hint of coercion. I can't tell her to go to bed and read; I can't talk about it to other people (so keep it under your hat, and please don't tell her I told you!) But at ten and a half, maybe we're turning a corner. Maybe.

All I have ever wanted for Alice is that she might be able to partake in the enormous pleasure of curling up with a book, and it has broken my heart that she hasn't been able to do that. Cross fingers - it might be here at last. The sight of her sitting in bed, absorbed in her book, makes my heart flutter with joy. And now all I can think about is, what can I give her next?

Tree Poem by Alice

Forlying, Forlying, Forlying
Smash!!
days and day prse by
and not a thing happens
the brown shall is
an skoth
an tell a crak
a sprout a tree is bern

Falling, falling, falling
Smash!
Days and days pass by and
not a thing happens
The brown shell is unscathed
Until a crack
A sprout a tree is born.

The Thwarted Reader

My daughter is passionate about books.

She devoured the whole of Harry Potter before the end of Grade 2; she knows the Chanters of Tremaris novels off by heart. After finishing Little Women, she eagerly hunted down Good Wives and Little Men and consumed them too. Her favourite book, by a long stretch, is Around the World in 80 Days; the elaborate language and the complications of the plot delight and absorb her. As a voracious reader, as a writer, as a proud mum, I'm thrilled by her evident love and need for literature.

But - and it's a huge but - Alice can't read.

She's in Grade 3 now and probably reading at a Grade 1 level. Deciphering the simplest sentences is a frustrating battle. We're almost certain that she has dyslexia (which after all means nothing more than 'difficulty with reading and writing'). All these books that she consumes, she has experienced either through audio-books or by me reading to her. The gap between what she wants to read, and what she is able to read, is so enormous that it might be never be bridged.

We've tried it all. She's had eye tests and ear tests and coloured glasses. She's had expensive assessments which told us what we already knew - that she has trouble decoding written symbols into words. She's had tutoring, which she hated, and we tried an at-home reading program which crumbled after a few weeks. She had a year of wonderful literacy support at school, but that program is only funded up to the end of Grade 2. Fortunately this year she's had a fantastic classroom teacher, who understands how to motivate her, and plays to her strengths.

Because Alice does have strengths. She is articulate and creative. She's confident and fluent in giving oral presentations; she's inventive and original. She is well aware of her difficulties with literacy and is convinced she's stupid. At the end of Grade 1 she was so frustrated and miserable that she was almost suicidally depressed, slumped on the kitchen floor, asking, "What's the point of me? What's the point of being alive?'

Thankfully she is no longer in despair, but sometimes I am. I fear for her future, I panic that she's never going to get it, that she'll be crippled by this disability for the rest of her life. Sometimes I think she'll be okay, that she's bright enough and creative enough to find her own path; sometimes I think one day it will all click and she'll be fine; sometimes I comfort myself by observing that she is, slowly, making progress.

But it breaks my heart to witness my child - a naturally solitary, imaginative child, who craves stories, who feasts on language, a born reader by temperament - shut out from the wondrous garden of books by the cold iron bars of this mysterious inability. She loves books so much. I hope and pray with all my heart that one day, she can have all the books she yearns for.