Harry READS…

Harry is starting school next year and so we’ve been trying to do some literacy exercises at home. And, undoubtedly like every other mother in the world, I don’t really feel that I have been doing enough. (Hmm, probably time for me to re-read my ‘Dear Mum, you’re doing enough’ post and take some of my own advice).

We’ve got a few variations of the alphabet around the place and we’ve been playing with the first letter of words, reading books and general awareness of letters and words, but nothing too specific.

Harry was playing with his magnetic alphabet board and I spelt the word ‘dog’.  “Do you know what this word is, Harry?” I asked him. (I’m not big on testing him with his talker, but, well, I’m not really sure what I was expecting.)

Harry presses the ‘characters’ folder on his talker and as I’m actively holding myself back from correcting him and redirecting him to the ‘animals’ folder, he says…

H📱: Wags the Dog

WAGS THE DOG!!!!!! Wags the FREAKIN’ Dog people! I am so excited and suddenly wanting to text and call the entire world- Harry will read! Harry will…Harry will!

And then this other thing happened…

H saying ‘Wags the Dog’ in response to my question was so clear and obvious that there was absolutely no denying that he had read the word ‘dog’, but this next occurrence had me remembering about making the least dangerous assumption. And so I am wiping out my initial hesitation and am going to make the assumption least dangerous to Harry. Here goes…

M: We could also write the word wags.

I moved the D and O tiles out of the way and whilst I’m doing this, H picks up a tile and I hear it drop to the floor. He then hands me the A. Okay, he nailed that. I’m trying to remain calm whilst putting the A in place and looking for the W. We can’t find it so I look on the floor next to his chair where I heard the tile fall…W.

WOW.

We spell out wag and have a little celebration with Harry displaying a very chuffed with himself face – deservedly so!

And then (I’m ashamed to admit) I hesitated…

Did that really just happen?
Maybe it was a fluke?
Maybe this, maybe that, blah blah blah…

And, please understand, this has nothing to do with me not believing in Harry, I do. But when you’re walking the fine line between hoping for the world for him and not wanting to burden him with expectations that may or may not fit in with what he wants for his life it’s sometimes scary to just let go…

But I AM letting go and I WILL make the least dangerous assumption, because if I can’t how can I expect everyone else to.

Harry can read.

No maybe’s, no misguided assumptions, no doubts…

Harry can read.

Full stop.