Poetry in Motion

It never ceases to amaze me, all that is going on inside one another, and we have no idea, really, and then we do.

Last fall, I began to worry. A friend mentioned that her child had recently had her eyes checked, and it turned out that the reason the child was struggling to read, waiting for it all to fall into place when she so wanted it to, was that her eyes weren't tracking, and after a short while of some exercises, it all clicked and she was off to the reading races.

Or maybe the worry had been there all along, because I think I must have started the conversation by mentioning that the whole reading thing wasn't really happening or hadn't happened yet for Orlando, and then she told me about the eyes, and I replied that Orlando had been to the eye doctor and that his eyes were fine.

She said her child had been to that same eye doctor and that doctor had missed the problem. So they had gone to a different doctor, a specialist, and I asked her for the name of the doctor, and I kept it with me, and googled him (the doctor) at home later, and called him, I can't remember if it was right away.

I mentioned that I thought Orlando was struggling to recognize the letters. I told him that Orlando seemed visually overwhelmed by many letters, didn't seem to "see" words on the page and he started talking about visual processing and this and that and he asked about his coordination and he said he worked in a whole clinic and that they would be able to test for quite a lot of things and I realized I was opening some door to a land I wasn't sure I wanted to go to. Yet.

Orlando had just turned seven... He had had plenty of exposure to reading and to books and to letters and words. He loves looking at books. He is articulate and coordinated and bright. I wasn't worried about his reading "late," but I wanted to be sure he had everything he needed, if he needed it.

I talked to Rom, and told him about my conversation with the doctor and we talked about whether we felt it was right to start getting tests. We didn't think it was time. The idea that there was something that could easily be strengthened in him (à la my friend's child's eye tracking) so that reading was no longer a confusing thing for him was appealing. But, but, it was still early.

And then the next week, for Mica's birthday party, I had bought a bunch of things to put in the piñata — balloons, tiny animals, stickers, tiny colored pencils and because I couldn't find blank notebooks, I bought these little books that had mazes, word searches, and dot-to-dots.

A few days later, Orlando sat down with a book and did all the mazes. All the dot-to-dots. Then he asked me about the word searches. I pointed to the words at the top and said that they appeared in the letters below and that you could find them and circle them.

He did them all, on that page, and then in that book, and then in all the books.

And Rom and I raised our eyebrows at each other: It seems like he is seeing those letters just fine.

So we waited, and I started doing a bit more focused work with him on letters, phonics, words. And still, wild guesses from Orlando about what the word might be (can, fan, m—ouse!)... No interest in words on a page. He has almost never asked me about words, as in "what is that word?" or "what does that say?" He wants to know how to read but doesn't engage with any part of the process.

It didn't feel right — any of it and mostly me trying to "teach" him. But also the worry that he needed more support.

And on an intuitive hunch, I ask another mom when her ten-year-old child learned to read and she said, "My child is dyslexic."

And a whole conversation came out of that... the same kinds of behavior that Orlando shows. There is visual dyslexia and auditory dyslexia, and early intervention, and many other things and another night of google. And another point of "Hm, not sure," but I did find out about phonemes, which of course I already knew about. But games and ideas and ways to find out more... to introduce it into our days.

And still, amid it all, a sense of wanting to honor his own timing and his own abilities and a sense of wanting to do the right thing, to give him the right tools, to do right by him. A sense of wanting to let it unfold without withholding the support he might need.

And then we went to the beach and he carried around his very important stick and climbed on the fallen, washed-ashore logs, and he stood on the bow of one, with the stick pressed down upon it and he threw his open heart to the sky and recited a series of words and turned to me and said, "Mama, was that a poem?"

I asked him to say it again, and he said it again.

"Is that a poem, Mama, because the words are rhyming?"

And I said, "Yes, Boo, that's a poem."

After many years of lofting

it will soon blow away

in the open sky 

now yet to stay

When we caught up to Rom, who had been up ahead with Mica, I told him about the poem, and we agreed that Orlando had tapped right into the source.

Later at home, while Rom was with Mica taking a nap, Orlando and I ate popcorn and played one of the games I'd found online. Clapping out the syllables. I just started, no explanation, "pop-corn" and "sea-weed" (which we eat on our popcorn), and he got into it, making up rules like when you get a seven-syllable sentence, you get 8 triple points and such.

And then a bit later, he asked me how you write "peed" and then he showed me his newest masterpiece:

And just this afternoon, he started stringing letters together and asking me what they said. O-z-z-i-o. O-r-a-a. And then he asked me, how do you spell trant? And aha?

He knew just where they needed to go:

It is as if whenever I worry, he goes about showing me, again, how he is teaching himself, joyfully creating, and is ever the author of his own story.

He shows me the source.

~ ~ ~