Parker's reading

So, Parker can read now. He's never really shown an interest in reading, despite his enormous interest in letters and writing down words and phrases. He spent a while when he was 3 obsessed with a couple of the leap frog videos that teach the letter sounds, but it never really led to any interest in reading. Rachel has tried to coax him from time to time, but he has really seemed to resist it.

And then last night we sat down and he read a complete Frog & Toad story to me, word for word, with no help except pointing to the word he was on. He knew much of it from memory, but caught himself mis-reciting it many times as he read out the words, and corrected himself. It was slow going, and many sections he sounded things out word for word with a lot of uncertainty, but he read the whole thing himself, correctly. He gets an intense, scrunched look on his face as he's trying to figure out a word.

It strikes me as typical of Parker to show no interest in something and then show total mastery of it. If he shows the same appetite for reading that he's shown for numbers, and math, and freeways, we'll be making more trips to the library very soon, I predict.

The whole thing pleases me immensely as a parent.