Miles Reads

At the beginning of our school year, I started introducing reading to Miles. He practiced dutifully, despite not having much enthusiasm for it and despite the headaches he kept complaining of. We learned about his eye issues shortly thereafter and put a hold on reading books. We have done plenty of word work, but reading actual books hasn't been a real priority for him. Instead, we have been working hard on his therapy at home, and at our last evaluation the Dr. said that there was enough of an improvement that he could begin reading again. Yay!

So now he's plowing through the first set of BOB books. I made a chart to help him keep track of what book he was working on passing off to me, also hoping that it would help motivate him. However, every time he would get so close to passing a book off, I'd say, "Do you want to read it one more time and see if we can get it passed off?" He'd always politely respond, "No, maybe tomorrow." And that was that. However, on this particular day, it seemed he had caught the vision. He was on book 9 of 12, and announced that he would pass off the rest that day. And he worked hard, practicing over and over again, and passed off book 12 to me the next morning. He prefers absolute silence when he's trying to concentrate, so I came downstairs and found him in the guest room like this. :) I ran as fast as I could for the camera. A reader was blooming right before my eyes!

When he was a baby I would read books to him, and from day 1 he hated it. He'd squirm off my lap, cry etc. I had to get creative. So I read to him while he was occupied in the tub or in his high chair. I handed him books to hold while we road in the car. I took him to library story times. He's since developed a hard earned (on my part :) love for books. Reading has been a bit of a challenge thus far, so to see him get fired up about it just does my heart good.