Xavier can read…
Xavier turned 7 last summer and for a while now we knew he could read a bit because he would do so when he thought we weren’t paying attention… but I knew he wouldn’t admit it until he knew he could really do it.
He has always been like that… It has been his personality since he was tiny. I have always seen him as the kind of kid that doesn’t like to be a “Performing Monkey”.. he doesn’t like to show himself “trying”… he doesn’t show that he can do it until he knows he can do it right.
So how did he learn how to read? Mostly… video games… and not “educational” ones. Video games that are geared towards older kids and adults. Spore, Neverwinter Nights, Baldurs Gate, Zelda, Star Wars Empire at War etc…
He loves video games and I have no problem letting his play… at first he would ask often what was written on the screen often and after a while he started asking less and less… the less he asked the more we saw that he was reading…
Earlier in the year we bought him a D&D monster manual and right away he knew all the monsters names and he was able to give me details on them, details that he was reading… just little words of course that he recognized but he was able to figure out a lot of things because of that. He looks at his books often, but not with us… always by himself, especially in the car.
In the last few weeks though, he has admited to himself and to us that he can do it and it has been amazing to see him! He has been loving to show us what he can do. He reads signs when we are in the car, he reads ingredients on food or in my recipes. He reads the titles of DVD’s in the closet and now he is reading books to us. He read a very easy book to me this morning and then I asked him to go get the Little Bear book that we have just to see if he could do it and he read the first story without a problem… and of course the look on his face after was priceless…
So.. my son, who has never been “taught” to read, can read… it is amazing to see how unschooling works 🙂
