I sat down at bedtime to read a book with Kylen a few nights ago. We haven't done as much of that lately, and need to pick it back up. We get lazy, and bedtime is just easier without it, but they both like it even if I occasionally feel they only care about it to stave off bedtime for a few extra minutes.
This time I picked up Hop on Pop from downstairs. Ky had never read it. At 5 1/2 he's way behind where Riley was at this age, his speech still a tangled web of dropped Ls and Elmer Fudd Rs. I've been pushing him to speak better, and he can do it, but again, laziness on both our parts. As for reading and counting, we've lowered our expectations for him, or at least I have, and rely too much on a very good daycare program and the coming of Kindergarten. So imagine my surprise when I reached page 15 or so and said, 'you read it.'
"Pat. Sat." After the long pause that followed he looked up at me, eyebrows arched.
I gathered my jaw up from it's resting place on my lap and called Traci in.
And away he went. Sounding out words, getting self-conscious and giving up, then trying again, fumbling here and there but connecting all the dots. All, add a T, equals Tall. Bed, drop the B or add an R and you get Ed and Red. I couldn't stop hugging him.
It's a pretty stiff reminder that expectations are a big part of success. The rough road for Kylen is that they've been taken up a notch, closer to where they should have been anyway, and it's time to discover that R, L and TH he's hidden away somewhere in his synapses.
We may put that surfer dude future in jeopardy after all.
