I remember when my daughter started school in reception, her teacher said to me that most of what they’ll be doing in class will be phonics and it wasn’t long after resumption, boom! She started bringing phonics books home for practice. Prior to that, I had done a little research on phonics. So, we started with the sounds such as the b, c, d, f, g and others. This was so easy for her to grab and I remember happily telling myself that, with what I am seeing, supporting her with her school work isn’t going to be difficult for the two of us.
Not so long, she brought another phonics book, this time around it was joining or blending the words together by this I mean, joining alphabets such as c a t to make cat sound. At this point, it was as if she wasn’t the same person who I had thought before now because for some reason, she wasn’t getting it.
I remember one of those days I had to say to her, you know what, I have had enough of this for today and she asked, why? Then I said, I’m starting to get to my red zone and I don’t want it, let me go upstairs and see if I can figure out how I can support you better, then I left. While I was there trying to figure out what was going on and how I can support her, I had a flashback of my driving lesson experience and how my driving instructor pulled over in the middle of lesson and said “you may never be able to drive a car if you carry on with this manual car. Your stop and control are brilliant, but your gear change is messing you up big time and I must tell you the truth, look you have done over 30 lessons and you’re still not able to change gear.
While I was pondering on this, I also had a flashback of when my dad was teaching me how to read the clock at a particular time and he was actually genuinely teaching me, but was beating me because I wasn’t getting it, the more he beats me, the more fearful I became and the more it was difficult for me understand. It was an experience I can never forget. With this, I said to myself I will not let my daughter go through the same.
Immediately, I remember a book I had read a while ago titled 10,000 Hours; YOU BECOME WHAT YOU PRACTICE by PHYLLIS LANE. Please, if you have not read this book, I’d encourage you to do so. I remember the “10,000 hour rule” which states that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill. It also says, practices are what we do with our time. They are the little steps, repeated every day. It also emphasized on Mastery practice and one of my parenting goals says “in the school of parenting, I have time to parent my two children”.
All of these made me say to myself she needs more time, practice, consistency and patience to get to the level of mastery. Somehow, I just got this energy from within and we started little by little every day without pressure on any of us, it wasn’t long, she started blending and pronouncing the letters together. To be honest, the first time she said cat, tap rat, I was so happy and I said to myself, Dumebi, well done, I’m proud of me. As I speak to you, she’s reading.
My point here is, there’s no dull child. Every child is a star dependent on the support the child gets from the adults in their life. Never underestimate the power of little steps per day, believe it or not it makes a lot of difference in the overall learning process of a child and also, remember to praise your child’s little efforts and don’t forget this popular quote by Lao Tzu that says, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.
