I don't often share our personal experiences with natural learning anymore online due to privacy issues and harsh judgment, but this might help some of my fellow Natural Learning families, so I'm sharing.
My son, almost 8, has exhibited some mild dyslexia and has been considered "slow" by outside family members when it comes to reading. Yet, his math skills have been nearly impeccable since age 5 without ever even opening a math book. This is another reason I am SO very grateful that he is given the autonomy, encouragement and support to learn at his own pace without being forced, which most often leads to further frustration and then feelings of failure, which, in the end, breeds apathy towards learning and low self worth. By remaining steadfast and not caving to outside opinions, we have continued to support him unconditionally and he has taught himself to read more and more by way of his passions. He may not be reading novels or even books, because he's simply not interested in that right now... but every time he reads a new word he is further internally motivated by his own excitement of accomplishing something that someone else has judged him for not being able to do. Every time he goes to type in a title on Netflix or Youtube, he is asking for help less and less. Every time we leave the house, he's pointing out words all over billboards and signs. He isn't in the back seat disconnected from the world around him, he is actively seeking out information from all over the place! SO many people hold "reading" as the pinnacle of worthiness in education from such a young age, but if the world ended today, how many books my son has read is NOT going matter... what matters is that he has LIVED a happy life pursuing his own passions with the full support and lack of judgment of his parents and learning everything he's needing along the way. Today he has shown drastic improvement in the dyslexia, so do I say that my son is dyslexic? No. He is just learning to read at his own pace as his own brain is ready and that might look different than someone else's time frame and standards.
From the linked article below:
“My perspective, after 40 years of working on this entity we call ‘reading disability’ or ‘dyslexia,’ is that we need to be thinking of it as a variant of normal, rather than an abnormality,” said Martha Bridge Denckla, a research scientist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and member of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. She suggests reading can be better understood as a talent, a biologically bestowed gift that is not doled out equally to everyone.
“There is variability at the highest level of the brain for a whole bunch of different things we call talents,” said Denckla. “We accept completely that there are people who do not have whatever the neurological basis for musical talent may be–we just say they don’t have that ‘ear’ for music. Well, people can also be born with an untalented ‘ear’ for the speech sounds of language, which makes it very difficult to connect with an alphabetic system and be proficient at reading.”
Let's stop comparing children to arbitrary standards AND each other. It's very damaging psychologically and frankly, it's rude. I wouldn't walk up to an adult at a gathering and quiz them on their knowledge, so why do we think it's ok to do this to children? Appreciate them for who they are and not how they can "perform", children are not here to entertain or please adults and are just as worthy of their intellectual property and privacy of mind as we are.
http://www.dana.org/media/detail.aspx?id=13124
