Is “CAT” not “DUCK”?

Abhi being my first child, I was quite ambitious about teaching him. I liked the idea of how English was being taught using Phonics. Since I didn’t learn English that way, I was quite interested in this new method. I watched a children’s video of LeapFrog on Phonics and liked it immediately. Abhi and I watched the video together a few times and before long he had all the sounds right. Armed with this new skill, I was all set to teach Abhi to read/write English. He was less than three then. This is how our conversation went:

Me: “hey Abhi! Do you want to learn to spell words in English?”

He: (probably didn’t understand what I was talking about) “okay!”

Me: “Now, what sound does the letter C make?”

He: “\k\”

Me: “And the letter A?”

He: “\a\”

Me: “And the letter T?”

He: “\t\”

Me: “Now we have three sounds – \k\, \a\, \t\. Can you put them together?”

He: (draws a blank)

Me: “Can you repeat the three sounds in quick succession – \k\, \a\, \t\and again \k\, \a\, \t\?”

He: (faithfully follows my instruction)

Me: “okay, do you recognize the word that you are trying to say?”

He: (no answer)

Me: “I can join you in repeating these sounds and this time we will say these three sounds, one after the other, a little bit faster than before”.

He: (is lost. In my eagerness to teach him, I fail to read his cues)

Me: “Now do you know the word that we are trying to say? I will give you a hint. It is a small animal that we see around often.”

He: (relieved that he has found the answer that would please me, his face glows) “I know! It is DUCK!”

I was totally flabbergasted. It took me a few seconds to hug him and laugh with him. This was a moment of revelation for me. I realized a lot of things that have helped me and guided me since then:

- learning is not necessarily linear -- just because he learned the individual sounds, it didn’t mean that he could put those sounds together

- learning without an appropriate context is meaningless

- trusting the child’s instinct and enjoying child-initiated learning, whenever it happens

Luckily, for him and also for me, I stopped “teaching” him after this episode. The insight that I gained helped Aparna too (In which I realized that it is not necessary to “teach” reading).

-- Hema