Say What?

I love talking with my son, Josh. He has such interesting perspectives and the way he verbally expresses himself gives me insight into how he thinks and processes information. When he was young, Josh had some difficulty remembering words so he would use descriptions to get his point across. He once described his ankle as "you know, that part that's like the wrist of your leg". He tended to use vague words such as "thing" and "that" rather than specific word labels. Despite the circumlocutions, I could always tell what Josh was talking about. Since Josh struggled to recognize many nonverbal signals and had to be taught how to use appropriate body language when he interacted, I could never take it for granted that Josh would just pick up on social cues and be able to express himself adequately. He could learn how to interact with other people, but he had to be taught specific discrete skills for social interactions. For my daughters, social skills came naturally and they just seemed to intuitively know how to relate to others. For Josh, it was like being in a foreign land where everyone else seemed to know the language but he struggled to learn basic communication and was vulnerable to being frequently misunderstood. I did speech therapy with Josh to work on conversational turn-taking, topic maintenance, and nonverbal ways to let a listener know he was interested. Unfortunately, Josh often was not interested in what others wanted to talk about, so then I had to teach him about being polite and a good friend by sometimes letting someone else take the conversational lead. Once Josh had some of the basic skills for social interaction and was able to express himself more effectively, he continued to practice and fine tune his communication exchanges. I noticed that Josh often did not respond when given a compliment. Outside of the family, Josh didn't get many positive comments so he didn't really know how to respond when it happened. I talked to Josh about possible responses and we role-played several situations together. After our practice session I reminded Josh that he had lots of strengths worthy of compliments so it was good that he was learning how to respond to them. Josh informed me that "Vanity was never my strongest weakness." Say what? After some probing (they don't call me the Momster for nothing) I was able to help Josh expand his message so that I could understand what he meant. His intention was to indicate that although he was aware that he had many significant challenges, being vain was not one of them. Therefore, he needed some help in learning how to respond to compliments. Even today, Josh comes up with some unique responses that catch me by surprise. Just this morning our dogs were playing and one of them ran over and stood next to me. I said, "Look, Josh, she's on base." After a brief pause, Josh jokingly said, "Then I'll be lead guitar." Say what? Translation: "base" sounds like "bass" as in a type of guitar. What's a band without both bass and lead guitars? Josh was making a play on words, and at least now he understands what I say and makes a deliberate choice to joke and say funny things.

Why Read To Readers?

Do you still read to your children once they are proficient readers themselves? It's true that they may read just fine independently and that should be encouraged, but let's consider some of the benefits of listening to someone else read. When you listen to a good narrator, you learn how to pronounce words you may have only read silently and mispronounced in your mind. This is one of the ways I knew my children had been exposed to a new vocabulary word, when they said something that was phonetically correct but not the accurate way to produce the word. Listening to me as I read aloud also exposed them to variations in inflection, volume, and timing which are important components for developing language skills. When I read to my children, even after they were good readers, I could explain vocabulary and themes in the context of what we were reading together. I could pause for discussion, something that typically does not happen during independent reading. Hearing my children's perspectives helped me to see how they express and process information. It gave me insight into some of their personality traits as they learned to think critically about our reading selections. Sharing a book together gave us common experiences which generalized to other activities. We sometimes quote favorite lines to each other or make a reference to a literary character with shared understanding. Another benefit of reading to younger children is that you can tackle more advanced material and facilitate a love for good literature from a young age. Listening to someone else read is good practice for comprehension, as the children are taught to visualize what they are hearing. Good readers can picture what they are reading about, which is why seeing a movie based on a book can be disappointing when it doesn't match what we had imagined while reading. When someone reads aloud it also provides the listeners with good practice for auditory skills. Learning to tune in to the auditory channel is an important skill that impacts many other academic and life skills. I recommend listening to stories performed by a good narrator even for young children who are not yet readers themselves. Learning to listen and visualize will serve them well in their own independent reading endeavors. Memory is enhanced when a visual image is recalled, so encourage your children to picture the story along with you as you read to them. I read to my children even when they were in high school and quite capable of reading without me, because the shared experience meant not only reading together but time together and connections made despite busy schedules. How many of us love to read but are hard pressed to find the time to actually sit down with a book that's not related to work or school with our children? Several years into homeschooling I discovered audio books for me. Again, a good narrator makes all the difference when listening to a story, but having access to audio books allowed me to "read" that way while doing dishes, laundry, crocheting, and other tasks. I still find that I have little time to just sit and read, but I no longer have a sense of reading deprivation as I go about my day with my little MP3 player loaded with audio books. Reading and being read to can be enjoyable for all ages and levels of readers.