My first post described a brief, fleeting instant wherein I could glimpse the confidence and pride of a young learner in a single moment.  However, over the past 2 and half years I have experienced the privilege and pain of observing a very different kind of magic. This is the magic and mystery of perseverance that comes with watching your own child struggle with learning to read.

As a mother of four, I am well aware that every child is unique, special, fabulous, frustrating, challenging and a true gift to those of us charged with their care and helping them to grow into independent, thoughtful and, ideally, happy adults.  Each of my four daughters faces the world differently every day.  Two of my four daughters fall under diagnosable labels which include ADHD, Learning Disabled, Anxiety Disorder, and even the highly over-valued word Gifted thrown around here and there. The journey we have taken and are still taking with them as we navigate the education system, advocate against stigma and bias, and the general angst of growing up could be a full blog series in itself.

But, one particular aspect of this journey has forever branded my heart and soul with an unexpected result. During the summer between grade 1 and 2 one of our daughters spent most of her bedtimes crying.  Not because of nightmares or resistance to sleep but, because in her painful words “everyone else can read”.  Now, you and I know this was not true.  We told her so – repeatedly! Yet this was her reality, her lived experience each and every day.  And it was tearing her apart.

I did what any parent would do – I felt terribly guilty! I teach reading. I teach reading to other people’s children, some of whom feel the same way as our daughter.  I am no expert and I am constantly trying new methods of reading instruction but, I am pretty good at my job.  We read to the girls from birth, visit the public library, own more picture books than I even thought possible, reinforced learning from school and, yet, her pain and tears were real.

Having already been down the road of psycho-educational assessments, ISRCs, IPRC, IEPs, cognitive behavioural therapy and more with one of our older daughters, you would think I was ready for this challenge.  (And I guess in many ways I was.) However, this felt different. Reading, both at the decoding and deep comprehension level, was a non-issue for our older girls.  This was new.  This brought to light the thing that no one wants to say out loud.  We judge intelligence by the ability to read. I heard this first said publicly by a fabulously out spoken, passionate special education resource teacher in my school board.  Now, it was the reality facing one of my own children and I knew and feared the bias and judgement she would potentially encounter from peers and educators.

Fast forward 2 and half years later to her grade 4 first term report card. (Otherwise this will become a novel.) Here is a “brief” list of what has transpired!

• reading every night before bed
• 2 supportive principals
• reading every night before bed
• 2 awesome special education teachers
• reading every night before bed
• 3 AMAZING, caring, loving, determined classroom teachers
• reading every night before bed
• 1 psycho-educational assessment
• reading every night before bed
• 2 diagnosed labels
• reading every night before bed
• 1 IPRC
• reading every night before bed
• 2 different reading intervention programs
• reading every night before bed
• 4 IEPs
• reading every night before bed
• 1 lovely psychologist and 1 helpful SLP
• reading every night before bed
• tears, tears, tears
• reading every night before bed
• reading every night before bed
• reading every night before bed
• PERSEVERANCE 

And this week the report card in a nut shell… “with accommodations…” she is working at grade level in ALL subject areas and achieving at or above the provincial standard in all strands!  Now, I can argue the importance of NOT valuing grades for hours and hours (I am sure I will make that the topic of a future post) but, this is a magical, magical achievement for the little girl who cried for a summer because everyone else had figured out the secret to reading and she had not. She finds it hard, I’m talking every single day hard, she still does not view herself as a “good” reader and her teachers (to whom I give a huge amount of credit) and I still have many, many, conversations about what “worked”.

But the real magic and mystery of this journey is not trying to figure out what reading instruction method worked. It is watching my child persevere, dare I even say BATTLE, when others, maybe including myself, would have given up. I do not know how to explain why she had this drive and determination when I hear from so many fellow parents and educators that other children do not exhibit the same characteristics.  (A point to which, I usually respond that all children have it inside themselves somewhere, it is our job to try and find it!)

All I know is that I take no credit whatsoever for the mixture of pain and fire in her eyes when she said, no matter how late at night, how tired out from hours of gymnastics practice, how burnt out from the already full day of learning,

“Mom, I have to do my reading every night before bed.”

MAGIC