FLN

What’s most fundamental for all children to learn?

You can listen to me read this post if you prefer:

Struggle bus

I’ve been struggling as a human lately. I made a mistake last week that damaged a relationship with a friend-mentor-confidante whom I care about a lot. So that’s a whopper. I got some (textbook delivery, constructive, valid, valuable even) feedback about several areas of professional growth that I know I need to work on, and damn-its-hard to do all.the.things well and sometimes I feel like I’m – like everything’s – moving too fast and like I’m doing none.of.the.things well.

Being back in Kenya has been topsy-turvy for a variety of reasons and I’m missing Colorado. There’s just a lot. 

This is not to say everything is bad or to provoke any sort of pity. Far from it. It’s just to say that lately I’m a frequent passenger on the struggle bus. 

Reading

Worst of all is that I’ve been an impatient mom with Clara. I feel ashamed and shitty about this. She’s learning to read and it’s really not coming naturally for her. And, as it turns out, I am not a gifted early literacy tutor/coach/teacher.

On a theoretical and practical level, I am not worried or impatient or feeling urgency for her to read now. She will learn to read. I am well-enough steeped in the research and I don’t see any need to force the issue. She’s 6. It’s fine.  

I’m also fortunate to not feel stressed on a social level either. We’re privileged to be part of a parent community that has chosen to send our kids to a forest school where academics play seventh fiddle (yeah, I know the expression is “second fiddle,” but I meant to say seventh because traditional academic learning really, really isn’t a priority there) compared with what I believe (and research corroborates) should be the essence of education at this age (and arguably always!): play, exploration, understanding self, connecting with – and developing empathy for – other humans, and connecting with – and developing empathy for – more-than-human nature. This is what Clara and Nora get to do everyday. It’s the best.

Plus, some of the other kids in Clara’s school aren’t reading much yet either. Mind you, they are all just 6 years old, but in most circles one only has to whisper the words “learning to read” and someone nearby is bound to tell you how their child prodigy learned to read – all on his own – at age 3 while doing backflips. In fact, our (quite lovely) dentist who Clara will see tomorrow because she has an adult tooth creeping in behind her two bottom front teeth which are still very much hanging on (though Clara insists they are really wiggly), told me that exact thing during our first visit to her office. Minus the backflips. “My son learned to read at 3,” she said. Maybe it was 4, but you get the point. She said it just after I told her that Clara and Nora go to a forest school. Her tone of voice was a dissonant chord of wistful-regretful-pride. Almost like she wanted to have wanted for her child, now grown, to spend more time being a kid rather than getting such an early start on bookishness, and she also wanted me to know that he learned to read at 3. Or 4. Whatever. Maybe I was reading into it (pun intended).

Anyhow, even with the fact that I am not worried or stressed about Clara learning to read right now, I’ve still been impatient with her.

Part of the problem is that she herself is stressed about it. She wants to be at the same level as some of her classmates who are ahead of her. She’ll recite beautiful messages from her teachers about the “power of yet” and how “everyone learns at their own pace” – and still she insists on bringing home the “red level” Songbird phonics books (whatever that means!) which are very clearly beyond her current skill. So it feels like a set up. And I want for her to be ok with her current level and pace. Meanwhile, I am overcome by this mom-hyperempathy where I feel every bit of her desire and desperation. 

What’s more, she wants to read so badly and she is trying so hard to produce the sounds that her usually excellent comprehension skills – the ones that show up when I read to her – go completely out the window. When she reads, the words seem to twist into abstract letter-sound combinations without meaning.

She was reading the sentence Don’t dig holes.  She got “Don’t dig” and then there was a picture of a girl digging a hole and somehow she was completely stuck. Like she couldn’t understand what a person might (or might not, as it were) be supposed to dig. She effortfully sounded out the word “huh-oooo-llllll-eee-sss” and looked into my eyes with blank, searching longing. I looked back at her saying, “You’ve got this Clara!” in perhaps too chipper a voice and then I prompted: 

“What does a person dig?” 

“A hole!” she shouted. 

“Ok – so look at the sentence” (which, by way of reminder, was, Don’t dig holes.) 

She looked straight at the words and read “Don’t dig a hole.” 

The same thing happened over and over again. Don’t pick that rose turned into “Don’t pluck the flower” even after she had sounded out thh-aa-ttt and rrrr-ooo-ss-ee (the silent e also got in the way). Dry that bowl morphed into “Dry that water” even after sounding out bu-oo-www-ll. 

“Ok Clara,” I tried, “Blend the word together. Stretch the sounds.” 

I tried to maintain my cool all the while thinking to myself that I just don’t want to be doing this because it is too advanced and what if she ends up feeling discouraged and loses her motivation – which is, remarkably, still sky high. (Is it possible for a person to be too determined?)

In spite of my best intentions and bolstered by my intellectual lack of concern about when she learns to read, I find myself square breathing and counting silently in my head as she stumbles through her early reader phonics books. 

I know some of my frustration and empathic worry show up on the outside. I am terrified she will feel like I am disappointed in her and disappointment is the very last thing I ever want to convey because it’s exactly the opposite of how I feel. I am in constant and infinitely growing admiration of and for all that she is. But what if she doesn’t know that? Or feel that?

What is fundamental?

And then there’s the personal-professional confluence – and dissonance – at play for me too. 

Even as I write about the value of nature-based learning at all ages, and especially, for-the-love-of-God-at-the-very-least, during these tender early years, and even as I downplay the importance of academics at this age, and even while Clara shows breathtaking naturalistic observation skills (“Mom, look! There’s a bug that landed on your tea bag while I was sitting here!” “Look at the praying mantis!” Her eyes light up and she follows it across the path while a nearby runner stopped to stretch watches her bemusedly and Clara is so enraptured she doesn’t even notice the person standing inches from her. “Mom, I spotted a chameleon on our walk.” And just in case I didn’t hear who had noticed the bug on my tea bag/the praying mantis/the chameleon/etc, she repeats proudly, “I spotted it!”). And even while Clara shows stunning curiosity and forms hypotheses about the world around her (“What kind of bug is that, Mom? I think maybe it’s a camouflage beetle. We just learned about them in school.” “I’m going to go take pictures of butterflies so we can try to identify them in the book later. I think I’ve seen that one before. Did you find my butterfly book?” “Mom, did you bring the snake book with us?” 

Even with all of this beauty and the love for more-than-human nature that seeps from Clara’s pores, I feel frustrated with the reading bit. 

You know, no one ever argues about whether or not students should learn reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic in school (though we are more than happy to debate how those things should be taught. Exhibit A = The Reading Wars). 

That these skills should be taught and learned is widely accepted. They form the yardsticks with which school performance and student achievement are measured.

Like many concepts in education, this sacred trio is lumped together in an acronym – FNL or FLN depending on the orientation of your source. Both boil down to: knowing how to read, write, and do math. Fundamental Literacy and Numeracy. (Or vice versa).

As I process the ways I’m struggling to be a good mom to Clara as she learns to read – as she works on fundamental literacy — and as I contemplate the distortions – and brokenness – rampant in our education system, I wonder, what if instead FLN stood for Fundamental Love of Nature? 

I love reading, writing, and math. I do think they’re fundamental. 

And, when we talk about fundamental – in the essential-existential-primordial-feel-it-in-our bones way, it’s a Fundamental Love of Nature that I want first and most for Clara. And for all children. 

Clara’s got that FLN in spades.

❤️,

B