Is This As Good As Reading Gets?

This is the first year I have exclusively helped the children with their homework. In my past married life, we had fancy things like tutors and extra child care but slowly and painfully most extra amenities are falling by the wayside.  Now we are kicking it old school.  I must admit that helping three elementary age children with their schoolwork is much more challenging than I had thought possible.

Jackson has been my primary child of academic focus this year.  Just being me or being Jackson is a challenge in and of itself. Get the two of us together to do homework and now you are talking some serious firework potential!

In the classroom, Jackson is only reading fourteen words per minute. At home, once he realized I was timing him, he took that as a personal challenge.  Now he reads in the fifty to seventy five WPM range. Hopefully he will find balance soon.

When Jax presented me with his library book for practice reading, I was less than excited.  Junie B. Jones was in the Top 100 Banned or Challenged Books for a reason in my book!  Seriously, the child who needs to work on his behavior and reading fluency is sent home with this book. Does he really need to the study poor social values of a main character known for her mouthiness and bad grammar?  Is that what it will take to seduce him into reading or will this just help expand his impulsive shenanigan repertoire?

There is a conservative streak inside me that advocates phonics and the belief that children should be taught proper spelling and grammar from the outset. They will have a lifetime of whole language!  They are already well versed in the vernacular! Can I learn to embrace the misspellings and other errors as long as my child engages in reading? This slapstick and vulgar style definitely approaches the needs of the most common child and Jackson does seem to enjoy reading it.

Every time Junie struggles with Junie grammar, my teeth itch. Subject and object pronouns are beyond her reach as are possessives.  Her adverbs lack the "ly' suffix.  She is incapable of conjugating irregular past tense verbs.  Hearing Jackson read words like funnest and beautifuller make me C-R-I-N-G-E. 

Here I sit in judgment, the most fallible person on the planet.  The one who openly admits to having made mistakes in every area of my life, errors including social as well as grammatical ones. This less than perfect mom will never attempt to raise an oxymoron, aka the 'perfect child'.  It might be time to normalize my expectations. My children might not strive to be the literary scholar I desire to become nor will they necessarily dedicate their lifetime to studying British Literature. They might not dream of me someday chaperoning them during their studies at Oxford. Que triste. 

In the end, I realize I am unwilling to implement radical censorship, particularly when they are only reading early chapter books. As long as they do not use Junie in the same sentence with Pippi or Eloise, I will be OK.

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