Last night, a really special thing happened. We have about a dozen books that are written in Arabic and English, and we’ve had them since our daughter was born. Last night, she brought one to my husband, because she’s taken an interest in learning Arabic, and she’s a budding (English) reader right now. She’s made some pretty amazing progress in a very short time, and the progress of a year I spent trying to teach her to read has been at least quadrupled by her kindergarten teachers in about 6 months. I want to introduce her to more Arabic, especially reading, but I also don’t want to overload her while she’s still learning to read English, so I’ve shied away from giving her a lot of time with it.
Anyway, she brought the book to my husband, but he was busy, so I said “I’ll read it with you!” We decided that she would read the English, and I would read the Arabic. My Arabic phonics have improved in the last few weeks, and I pretty much know the sounds of every letter, even if I don’t always say them well. So we read the book, very slowly. I helped her figure out the English words, and I sounded out each Arabic word I didn’t quite know. I was fairly successful, and I was very proud of my daughter for trying to not only figure out the English words, but pronouncing the Arabic words after I read them.
I’ll be honest, I was very amused at the whole incident, because I realized that we were basically both reading the same way. She knew many of her words, but needed help, and I had to sound out the words I didn’t know very slowly several times before I felt confident in them. I also realized that my daughter didn’t really care that I can’t pronounce the words correctly, because she doesn’t really know any better. She was just happy to be reading with me.
I felt a big connection with my little girl last night because we were both going through a significant learning experience, and we were able to share that. Not many parents are able to share the experience of learning to read with their children in this way. It gave me a great appreciation for what children have to go through when learning to read, because, let’s be honest, most of us don’t remember what it was like when we had to learn how to read. I hope I can share many more books with my children!
