Rrreeeeeeeadddddddinnnnngggg

Dutch is signed up for the Multnomah County Library's awesome Summer Reading Program, so she has a little booklet with a path of steps to prizes. I told her that she could earn a step each day for her regular dose of being read to, and she could earn a step for each book she read herself (with support). This proved to be serious motivation, and she's been struggling through a book a day for three days.

Dude. Reading is HARD. You've probably forgotten this; I certainly had.

This is a video I made tonight of Dutch reading Bark, George.* It captures a lot of my experience of Dutch-learning-to-read. It's a slog. The film includes lots of guessing, several painful freak-outs, much looking at me to try to get me to solve her problems, some complete failures to understand the whole sentence, excruciatingly (for me) extended episodes of wrestling with a word she just read on the preceding page, and a few moments of delighted recognition. My favorite thing about watching her do this very hard job of work is that it's intensely physical. She braces herself, repositions the book, puts her feet on it, sprawls on the floor in front of it, leans on it, writhes around in agony, and so on.

Anyway, it's kind of funny and painful and intimate watching any one of these clips briefly. I have posted them all for the sake of anybody who's interested in getting about half of the book experience, which I think went on for about nine hours (notice that it gets darker and darker outside in the clips as we trudge onward). You are very brave. Almost as brave as my daughter, who is tackling a language that gives us such delights as the evil "gh", with which we struggled yesterday:

• laugh
• slaughter
• daughter
• dough
• slough

See? Aren't you glad you already know how to read?

*A really excellent book.