The making of a reader
Another tip about unearthing a child’s talent is through sheer hard work and persistence. My son is a late reader. Despite my early efforts, he was not interested in books throughout Grade 1. Yes, he would listen to a story, told conversationally. However, not in reading a book, not even a picture book with a few sentences on each page.
Faced with a friend whose daughter read by age four, I was feeling frustrated and discouraged. Of course I knew that each child is ready for reading at different ages. And I just happened to have a late reader on my hands.
After our move to town A, I would carry a three-year-old, shoulder a backpack and lead a seven-year-old by hand on the bus every Saturday to the town council library. We stayed for fifteen minutes the first visit. The next visit, I aimed for thirty minutes with a ten minute break for drinks in the canteen. Gradually, I lengthened the time and miracles of miracles, I found that my son became interested enough to find the kinds of books he liked. At first he looked for cartoons and pictures. There are books in the town council library filled with big pages of colourful pictures without a single word. Then he found books on transportation. He flipped the pages looking at helicopters, ambulances, fire trucks, racing cars, trains, hovercrafts and many more vehicles.
A blessing about public libraries is the fact that each low table is covered with stacks of books that children like. Very often he found two or three books he liked just by sorting through the books laid higgledy piggery on the table.
Books are like friends, he often looked for and found the same books and repeatedly looked through them. Each week, he would point out different things about his favourite books to me. Not necessarily the same things though. For example, one Saturday he would point to a fire engine and told me he will grow up to be a fireman. Then next Saturday he would point to a rescue helicopter and told me a story of how the pilot flew to an island to rescue a sick child and sent him to the nearby hospital.
By the time my daughter went to nursery school, we’ve accumulated twenty library cards. If my son flipped through two books and read a few pages of one of them on his own at home, I was an extremely happy mom.
And so, I continued to borrow books weekly until he was in Grade 10. From the hundreds of books that passed through our doors, he had acquired a love for reading. I was not surprised, for my husband and I are avid readers. Today my son speed reads, he can finish a book in about a quarter of the time I take. He has a fine grasp of both main languages, plays with the nuances of words and acquired a wide range of general knowledge. He can share confidently on many topics.
It was well worth all the years of lugging books back and forth, whether in a car boot or on my back. And I can certainly tell you that in the beginning, he preferred the TV and cinema screen to the printed word. He was not a born reader, it was a hard earned hobby, borne through years of persistence, encouragement and sheer effort.
* 1450 17 12---Sunflowers--Flowers-Ma from freefoto.com
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