Surviving Struggling to
Read
By Melanie Young and Samuel Adams Young
Ithought I was one Super Home- school Mom. Our three older chil- dren learned to read early and were taking off academically. No problems. I can handle this. Then, I began to
teach Samuel to read.
He was just as smart as his brothers,
so it was a shock. Some days he remembered the letters and even their sounds,
but at other times it was like he’d never
seen them before. Sometimes he’d say
his stomach hurt when we did school. I
thought he was trying to get out of working. It was so frustrating! I felt like crying
many days.
Some days he
remembered the letters
and even their sounds,
but at other times it was
like he’d never seen
them before.
My earliest memory of learning to read
was in the den with a ring-bound curriculum we have. Mom was trying to get me
to read the first page or two over and over.
The words were just dancing around on
the page. I was crying and she was frustrated. I kept wanting to go to the bathroom. Mom said I was old-soldiering and
that I could go when I was done. I just
remember crying and crying. Finally she
gave up. I don’t think I made it to the bottom of the page.
I thought it must be the curricu-
lum, so we tried phonics program after
phonics program. Meanwhile, I felt like
an absolute failure and so did Samuel. I
prayed and prayed for wisdom and cried
rivers over it. Samuel was sure that he
was the problem.
110;October;2012;•;Struggling;Readers
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