BioWriMo Year Four: Learning

I turned three in 1993. It was a year when I really started to develop differently from most kids.

When my brother was of schooling age my mom decided to homeschool. There a lot of views on homeschooling but in this case, with us both being young and kind of weird, it was a good thing. Aaron is of course very stoic, he likes to question everything he’s told and he learns kinesthetically, some traits that do not gel well in public schools. Mom could handle it. I wouldn’t have done well in public school either as a kid but I’ll get to that later.

The important thing is that my mom would teach Aaron and even though I was a toddler who could barely make himself understood I sat in. My mom read to us, Little House on the Prairie and Where the Red Fern Grows and some Bible stories. Then she taught Aaron to read. It was a slow process and she had to use some alternate teaching methods but he learned it and so did I.

I learned to read by sitting in on those lessons. At the age of three. Probably some crossover into the next year of my life but still. Eventually I could read better than my brother by the time I started being taught to write. I feel like this is one of the biggest accomplishments of my life and one of the reasons I’m the person I am today.

By the time I turned four I could read but I couldn’t talk very clearly. I played by myself a lot even though I had a brother relatively close to my age. But I still never slept through the night.