A new month

April 2

Mom is here visiting and I think she spends a good part of the day laughing. Xander has been providing her with enormous amusement. Not intentionally, of course. She just finds him funny. He is very much his own person and has strong opinions on everything that happens around him. Xander loves having her here -- she is quite good at doing what she is told to do!

Mom's visit has been good for Jason as well. He has got a captive audience when he decides to read. I have been impressed. It is work but he has read three of the 'Mr Putter and Tabby' books by Cynthia Rylant. There are words he does not recognize, and with these he needs assistence. He is also like his mother in that he often 'reads' by recognizing the first few letters and selecting an 'appropriate' word from his vocabulary. I explained to him that there are two ways to figure out words. Both have the potential for error: one can 'sound out' words using phonics. This, however, is not full proof as Tom learned when he sounded out the word 'hour.' He saw the words and used it in a sentence to his mother, something to the effect of 'I will be back in a whore and two minutes.' His mother was flabbergasted, probably wondering where he had heard THAT word. She figured it out but the story stuck. The other approach is one I used as a child. I would see a word, not recognized it though I could figure out its meaning by context. When I wanted to pronounce it, I would mix it with a word I did know how to pronounce. One gets some very odd results. The one I remember the best was the word 'Palimino.' I saw the word all the time. Didn't know how to pronounce it. But it looked like the word 'Pomelo' to me so I said 'Pamilo'... sigh. Jason, of course, thought these stories of parental error were wonderful. I then told him 'When people laugh at mispronunciations, and they will, they may laugh out of sympathy. They may laugh because the word sounds funny. I told him 'you can choose to be offended or hurt or you can think 'wow, I made someone laugh!' If you believe that laughter is a gift to the heart, then laughter won't hurt you.' We will see how well that idea takes.