I Feel Like Such a Liar

Learning to read English must be so darn hard.

I don't remember learning to read, but I'm enjoying teaching Liam to read. With his curriculum, he is learning to read short vowel sounds first. The A says a such as cat, the E says e such as egg, etc.

The curriculum has been moving too slowly for my eager learner, so Rick and I have been adding some easy readers along the way to keep him interested. We have also taught him some blend sounds such as oo, ch, th, and sh.

The other day, Liam came to me with a huge grin on his face and said, "I know how to spell 'soup'."

"You do? Tell me."

"S-O-O-P."

I praised him for the effort and gently corrected him.

Not a minute later, he brought me a book to read. I can't remember the title exactly, but one of the words in the title was 'all'.

He pointed to the word and said, "I know THAT word!"

I cringed, because I knew where he was going with this. He said, "It says 'Al'."

Once again, I praised him and gently corrected him. I also said, "The A says ah, but sometimes it also says ahh like the word 'all'."

His mouth dropped open and his eyes searched my face for further explanation.

"But YOU SAID, 'The A says ah'," he shouted.

"I know I did, and the A does say ah, but sometimes it says ahh."

I didn't bother explaining that it can also say aaa like my very own name.

We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Motherhood does call for some lying along the way, doesn't it?