At the risk of making a generalization, nobody learns to read on their own. Whether it is a parent, grandparent, friend, older sibling, mentor, teacher, or any other prominent figure in your life, you learn to read because you are taught to read. You are coached, led, directed.
Personally, I wouldn’t have half of my literacy skills with my father. As a child, I all but hated him for the way he taught me. I didn’t know any other kid who got homework from their parents. But I am beyond thankful that he pushed my limits and made me work harder than the rest. Although it wasn’t all work, exactly.
When I was about five or six years old, my dad gave me a classic collection of the Encyclopedia Brown books. He wrapped each one individually and as it wasn’t until we finished one that we could open the next. I remember so clearly, sitting in the “big chair” under a blanket, following my dad’s fingers while they traced under each line as he read. The books were childhood mystery stories, designed to make you think. So, as the plot developed, he would stop several times throughout the story and ask me what I thought. “Who committed the crime? How? When? How does Encyclopedia know?” I racked my brain trying to impress him with how smart I thought I was. Of course I didn’t know it at the time, but he was forcing me to think through the story and remember as many pieces of it as I could. I had to retain the information, and if I didn’t, I got the answers wrong. Very few things upset a child more than being wrong, so I tried harder to remember every detail of every story, one after another. My basic reading skills improved as well, also through an indirect training method that I didn’t understand. Following his fingers across the page and subconsciously matching the sounds to the print provided a sensory association exercise. It was very Mr. Miyagi, wax on-wax off kind of stuff. Reading mystery “novels” became my favorite activity with my father, and I had no idea he was teaching me. If I did, I probably would have protested like he was trying to make me clean my room.
Although I love reading immensely, I’m vastly more thankful for the writing skills my father taught me… or forced upon me. From late elementary school to early high school, he made me write one paragraph on a current event a couple times a week. And he made me write it in cursive. I was miserable. No one wrote in cursive after the second grade, no one else had to right stupid papers on current events, and no one else had a father who hated them. It was cruel and unusual punishment. But slowly, without realizing, my handwriting improved. My vocabulary expanded and my interest in the world around me spiked. I began to care. I wrote about more intellectual things with better script and more eloquent language. Moreover, I developed the very beginnings of my writing style and my search for inspiration.
During the process, my dad noticed my negative nature expressing itself on paper, seeing as I was diagnosed with depression at a young age. I found the saddest stories, anywhere from local to international, and wrote only about them. The overwhelming majority of the stories I found had a negative, solemn tone, implying what I thought to be the helplessness of the world. So my father implemented a new rule. “Nothing sad, unless it’s nationally significant and needs attention.” I had to look a little harder and dig a little deeper, but I began to find the hope in the world. In turn, I wrote happier songs, more positive poems, and short stories that ended with a “happily ever after.” I’m not claiming any of these were very good, but it was a start.
No one learns to read or write on their on their own. The same way no one learns to love without anyone to love them. And in my own experience, they were the same thing.
HR: IMDB, google dictionary
X_Sarah Elizabeth Lemon
