Retro First Moment

An iPhone photo of Luke, at his grandfather's house, reading the comics page for the first time. The comics page in an actual newspaper -- we don't subscribe to any physical papers anymore. I taught a lot of kids to read (or at least helped them learn) but  it is so much more amazing when your own child starts to do it, as exciting as when he said his first word or took his first step. It's as if he were the only child in the world clever enough to figure out how to do such a miraculous thing.

Comments

[genevieve]

It is miraculous. Nice to hear a teacher say it too, though.
I am often thinking to myself what my autistic, non-reading son's notion of print must be - most of his exposure is at a pre-reading level, but he's stuck behind the literacy wall to the best of our knowledge given his limited communication skills - can probably recognise his name, maybe a couple of letters.
He has watched Charlotte's Web many times now, and when she is working on the web in the middle of the night (beautiful computer animated scene, very fine work) I say to him, what is she doing? and he says, 'writing'. He knows that I write to his carers about him every day, and we send stories with writing and pictograms after the weekend, so he knows it is instrumental.
All of which often makes me wonder how it is that I have been seeing words in my head as I say them for about forty-five years now. Incredible process.