One of the Most Exciting Things I’ve Ever Done

Everything I’ve done over the past decade or so seems quite mundane when you look at it on paper. I grew up, went to college, got married, started a family – it all sounds quite usual, does it not? These days I am in the thick of raising our little ones, wading through the joy and the struggles and the lessons day-by-day. It is often intense, sometimes exhausting, and quite frequently hysterical.

But one of the most seemingly ordinary things to have occurred during these past eight years of child-rearing is one of the most thrilling experiences I have ever had.

I taught my child to read.

It was so scary when I first started looking down this path five years ago. I knew I wanted to homeschool, but the immensity of the task felt overwhelming, especially teaching these babes to read. What if I botched it? I knew then, as I do now, that reading is a big deal.

Like every other part of parenting that struck fear into my mama heart, the best way through it was just to do it. And so we did, with the help of many books from an early age, an Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading (yes, this is what I needed!), and plenty of good old fashioned time. That time spent singing the alphabet and pointing at letters, and practicing phonics cannot be underestimated.

(Isn’t time spent often the answer to many of these big parenting quandaries?)

And while this oldest boy of ours has been reading for a few years now, his voracity for books has just lately become quite stunning to me, reading the same book two or three times before I have a chance to turn around and acquire more. It is a good problem to have, and I am grateful for it.

Now I sit and listen as our younger son, (nearly six already?!),  reads me stories about a fox in a box,  and I am captivated by the process. I see now that everything changes when they read.

And what a privilege it is to be there for every moment and watch it all unfold.