I got to experience a moment of bliss on Mother’s Day as all three of my boys read together. I’m sure they were worn from the excitement of breaking a window.  Yes, the youngest threw his “special” rock at the rotating fan which caused the rock to ricochet off the fan and fly directly into the sidelight.  Should I be impressed or upset?

And did you know that glass shatters at 3,000 miles per hour?

Anyway, I was away while my husband was “watching” the kids, but I can’t be too mad at his negligence since he was cleaning the bathrooms. 

My first question was, “Why are there rocks in this house?” You see, this is a rock that my son found at school on St. Patrick’s Day after the leprechauns had visited in the night.  I’m a sucker for glittery rocks hewn from the tips of rainbows, so it’s still in the house. 

But all is forgiven when I see them all reading together like this.  We’ve worked particularly hard to get to this point as our first son struggled with decoding early on.  I knew he seemed intelligent enough, but he could not read, wouldn’t even pick up a book in 2nd grade.  That was the year in my life that I read The Wizard of Oz and thought I would never read another book as good as that!

So his lack of reading or being able to read was bothering me that summer. I felt a sense of urgency to do something about it.  But what? My answer, not so strangely, came from reading. In The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Science, I learned about a neurologist who had developed a computer program to help herself with her own brain deficiencies, much of which had to do with language.  Eventually, she and her husband developed a computer program to help kids with their reading and language deficiencies.  You can get it commercially as we did, but some school districts even use it.  Anyway, after much expense and several months of sitting with a 7 year old five days a week, 50 minutes a night after school at the computer, after swim practice, or after basketball, my son’s reading scores flew up.  His reading teachers asked us what we were doing at home. 

“It’s not me; it’s the computer program,” I would insist.  But now I realize that my husband and I had both made a commitment to doing this program and seeing our son through it.  So even though we weren’t teaching him how to read, we were instrumental in his success. 

One night as I tried to sneak past A’s room (he always has a lot to talk about, and my book was calling me), I thought I was seeing things. A book in his hand?  So I looked again and was caught. “Hey, Mom, can you come in here?”  Nope, I was seeing straight.  He was halfway through the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  Since then, he’s raced through so many books, I have to be at the library at least once a week to keep up. And even though he still likes graphic novels the best, I don’t mind.  He’s getting lost in those books. I love it when I can’t get his attention because he is so absorbed in what he’s reading.

At school, I have students pulled from my classes regularly for help with their reading.  And though they are getting help, I know that if our school district had the resources, these kids could actually get more and better help with this technology because the program actually changes the brain of the student and helps make it easier for the student to decode.  They would never need a reading tutor again.  Knowing this is frustrating, as so many issues in education are, because I can’t fight for everything.

I was quite relieved when my oldest boy found his love of reading.  His other brothers don’t seem to have the same struggles in that area, and of course, they mimic all that their older brother does. 

I know it’s a bit sentimental to say, but seeing the boys in this posture today could make any book loving mom a little teary.