Monday, February 4, 2008

My SweetP's Frustration

Tonight I sat down with sweetP to do his homework with him. And it was a rather bitter battle.

He has a hard time with reading. I feel a little guilty because I didn't send him to preschool. His little brother had just been born. He wasn't potty trained. He wasn't ready. And then the next year, we didn't know what our schedules would be like and it was just easier to keep him home. I had grand plans to teach him myself. But life got busy and it never happened.

I taught him lots of other things. He has great life experiences that tie in to lots of things. He can do math really well. What can I say, I'm a math person. But he is having a hard time with reading.

He has improved leaps and bounds this year and I am really proud of him. But he is frustrated at how much he doesn't know when we are reading together. I push him to try to sound out words.

Usually he doesn't mind doing the homework, but tonight as soon as we got started he was mad. And a bit obstinate. (I don't know where he got that from.) And I feel bad. I love to read. He loves books. He wants to read them, but he just isn't there yet. I wish that he didn't have to work so hard and instead could just absorb it the way he absorbs other things.

And I know one day it will suddenly click and it will make sense. And he will turn into the super reader that I know he will be. But in the meantime it is hard to watch him work so hard and get frustrated.

4 comments:

laurie said...

ah, that is hard.

my niece was the same way. she couldn't read very well until she was 8 or 9. and to make it worse, her little sister was a better reader than she was.

sweetp will catch up. you know that. mary did, too.

but it's hard, that in-between time. don't push it too hard--you want him to think of reading as an enjoyable thing.

books on tape with companion books he can read along with are pretty useful.

Kim said...

Bless his little heart. Things will click for him, I hope sooner rather than later.

My kids are all really good readers. Two of them were early readers; one was a little later, but is a big reader now.

Good luck. I know those frustrations. When my kids struggle nowadays, it tends to be with math.

-Ann said...

There's an award waiting for you at my place. :)

the rotten correspondent said...

It will work itself out. Honest. All it will take is something piquing his interest that he wants to read and there won't be any stopping him.

Of my three, none of them were super early readers, but once they got into it they made up for lost time immediately.

I'm hearing you beat yourself up. Don't do that - okay?