How can something as useful and positive as books become a distraction in my girl's learning? You see, Mika's preferred source of stimulation is visual and auditory. She observes hundreds of details in our environment that I don't see until she shows them to me (my brain tells me to focus on other "more" important tasks): the posters on a busy school wall, the voicemail flashing light, the black cat on a black chair, the squirrel hiding on a branch, a light left on in the car, the street lights, etc. She also notices all our bodily function noises (she finds burping and farting extremely funny) and she's extremely fond of music in general. You can guess that she's a tv addict and would love to watch it non-stop if we let her. How do books even compare to this somewhat passive way to participate in life? In my quest to observe for learning, I note how we have not been able to adapt the stories to actively involve her in the reading except her inclination to echo the words we read and occasionally fill-in the blanks. After reading her favourite "Franklin says Sorry" for the hundredth time that day, I kid you not, I came to the conclusion that I had become part of her "ism" (exclusive and repetitious behaviour) instead of JOINING her in her ism (that could look like flipping pages of a book along side her doing the same thing instead of reading the story to her-I tried that but she "DON'T WANT TO!). I'm aware of the progress we've made in the last three years: she went from flipping pages of books endlessly and walking away immediately if I started reading them, then she started listening and looking at stories and finally, she's now requesting to read a book and making a choice between her favourites ones. That's HUGE!! She requests us to "read book" then when we pause within the story to regain her joint attention through eye contact, she'll say "READ!!!"-slightly insulted we're stoping her enjoyment. This said, because we're stuck in a rut, I decided to take the books out of the playroom (oh my!!) and invite her in more engaging games for the time being. We played "order mom in the mirror", "chase the lion", " sing! songs!" crawled through hurdles of obstacles to work on brain organization and yes, she asks for the books and I told her that tonight we will read stories. To read AND not to read!
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