Pronunciation is a Matter of Opinion

Did you know that there are three ways to pronounce the letter A?

Ah, uh, and A.

The three possible pronunciations of the letter A, along with every other vowel, and the number of sound changes that letters make when combined with other letters are all painfully clear to you when you are still trying to teach your almost 7 year old to read after two years of Kindergarten. On a good day she pronounces the letters F, T, and other random letters like the letter H. There are lots of “huh” sounds when we read.

Part of me wishes that the word “with” really was pronounced “wuh, eye, tuh, huh”. Then maybe we could move on wuh-eye-tuh-huh our lives. It might take a little longer to get there, but at least we’d be swinging in the hammock, running after chickens, and living up the summer like we’re supposed to be, and not mad at each other for an hour because that’s how long it takes to go through every possible pronunciation of a vowel in ten words.

If there is an alternate sound, she’ll find it first.

She’s testing it out to see what alien languages we’re trying to teach her.

It also takes so long to get to the end of the word that most of the time she can’t remember what sounds existed at the beginning of the word if the word is longer than four letters, so she has to sound it out again. If she looks up once while reading a word, she has to start over with the word. If she finishes figuring out what a word is, and then looks up, she’ll forget that she already read that word and start reading it again.

I said, “Amaya, what does ‘t-h-e’ spell?” It took a year to teach her this word, and she can remember it orally, although when she sees it she still sounds out ‘tuh-huh-eee’.

“The,” she said, grateful to know an answer.

“Ok, so the letters t-h sound like ‘th’. Just put that at the end of the word. The sound ‘th’,” I said, with emphasis. “Like, this word is, wuh, ih, th.”

“Wuh, eye, tuh, huh, ‘the’. Why-tuh-huhhhhh-the. Whytuhhuhthe. WHAT?! I don’t know that word! That makes no sense! This word is so complicated! I can’t do this!”

We know that her brain works differently than other kids’. Even different from Mozely. It’s like we’re sitting down every day with an almost totally erased brain slate when it comes to reading. Yet her memory for anything that is not letters, numbers, when to be quiet, or what I sent her into the other room to put away is amazing and her ability to notice small details is beyond her age.

There are three pronunciations of the letter A.

Ah, uh, and A.

There’s also AAAAAHHHHHHH! as you run away screaming from yet another failed reading lesson.

But who’s counting.

That’s the next hour.

Introspection

Amaya had the flu two weeks ago, and then she admitted she had swallowed a quarter in an unrelated medical emergency.

As a side effect of these events, Amaya briefly became very introspective. She faced her imminent death. She compared her misery to better moments, asking me if I could recall times when quarters were not in danger of being removed from one’s intestines. We reassured her over and over again that she would feel better eventually. When she woke up on the third day, she cried because she knew she was still sick and she knew it was unfair. She hugged and cuddled and spoke quietly for about five days. She didn’t enjoy eating and mealtimes were made of tears. I let her watch Phineas and Ferb for longer than anyone should.

Jake and I remembered how endearing she could be. Even her tantrums had good reason. She slept with our picture under her pillow so she “could always remember us.”

Then she got better. We washed the vomit off the car. The quarter was not present at the xray. Her tantrums started making us shake our heads and send her to time out again. She lost a tooth and the tooth fairy remembered to visit, this time. The hole in her smile is hopefully as momentary as her new inability to smile naturally.

Temporary and fleeting hardship is the sweetness of childhood. Recent tragedies make me so amazed and grateful at the constant change and impermanence that exists in my life.  Children deserve that.

Enjoy now. Merry Christmas.

Imaginary Numbers

Amaya is probably the only person who truly considers positive integers to be as abstract as metaphors.

When she started Kindergarten last year she couldn’t count to ten. When she finished Kindergarten she could sometimes count to twenty. Now half way through the second time around she can count to 39, and then she says “twenty”.

I’ve tried to explain how this works to her. Four comes after three, and therefore, forty. If I help her get past 39, she gets stuck at 49 (back to twenty) and so on.

Today we were counting and she said, “I don’t think anyone can count to 100.”

I said, “Lots of people can count to 100. I can count to 100.”

“WHAT?! I thought it was almost impossible!”

I said, “Once you learn how to count it’s like a pattern, and you can count as high as you want.”

“But no one can count to a million. It’s a sploder!”

“A ‘sploder’? What’s a ‘sploder’?”

“It’s like 33,000. Or a really long car ride.”

Only Amaya can create a simile about a number with an imaginary word compared to a number, and it still makes some kind of strange sense.

Words

 

When I talk to Amaya I can actually see my words spilling off her ear lobes.

“Amaya, don’t go in your room. Mozely’s sleeping in there.”

“Ok,” she’ll nod, and then turn around and walk down the hallway to her room.

Usually my words are full of “don’t”. I think she has trouble keeping tabs on negatives.

She has the best self esteem. It makes her so articulate.

“Mom, would my tush look good in that uniform?” she said as we drove past some construction workers.

“What are you talking about, Amaya?” I laughed.

“I’m TALKING about my TUSH!” She thinks I am so daft sometimes.

“Well, you do not have a fat tush, so I’m sure it would.”

“Everyone has a fat tush, Mom.”

Where did this girl learn the word ‘tush’? And why did I see her shaking her bare tush at a neighbor friend through the fence yesterday?

After school I was sweeping the floor and she flew in the back door. “MOM! Do you know what a pre-hunting rally is? That’s what wolves do!”

While I was considering what to do with this information, she ran out the front door, back to her friend’s house.

Just now she asked me if I would take her outside to the car, because it’s dark, so she can claim her goggles. “Because I want to pretend to be a scientist. Please, please, pretty hugs and kisses please.”

She lies about anything, prefers green vegetables above any other color, loves hard enough to hurt people, and dreams during group assignments in kindergarten. She always forgets what comes after 29 and still won’t look at the letters long enough to learn to read, but she’s figured out that pretending to pause makes it seem like she’s considering what the word is before she just makes something up.

If she isn’t good at something, she acts like she doesn’t care at all about it. She has no desire to do anything that doesn’t come to her naturally.

After she fell once while learning to ride her bike she didn’t want to practice any more. We backed off for a year, because people told us that she would want to again, on her own.  Any time we asked her if she wanted to ride her bike, she didn’t, and would say that she was just fine with only riding her scooter and she wanted us to sell her bike. We finally forced her to practice, last week, under threat of no t.v. During the very first ride I wasn’t even touching the seat, just pretended. She turned all the way around the culdesac on her own. After five more rides I made it obvious that I wasn’t holding on and she stopped immediately and threw her head back and cried. She couldn’t hear any of my words above her wailing.

She told me that “Glum” means ‘sad’ and ‘unhappy’, which she learned on “Word Girl”, a favorite show. “Redundant means you talk to yourself and you put your finger on your nose,” she said. She has more vocabulary than any kid who reads books.

I run after her, trying to gather up my words so they won’t get lost in her costume drawer. I hold on to them while she’s jabbering, but there’s no pause in her conversation. I try to organize what I’m going to say first so that she won’t forget what she has to do next.

I guess she figures she has enough words for the both of us.

Much Thanks.

So today,
wake up frickin' early
Insanity with Shaun T
green smoothie (delicious, hungry 5 minutes later)
get Amaya off to school, late
teenagers teenagers (super healthy and not enough lunch) teenagers teenagers
ONO YO with babies
babysit my babies. Barely. Mostly when they cry.
GRANOLA GRANOLA GRANOLA
make dinner with loads of BUTTER because. It's over.
put babies to bed
fall asleep immediately afterwards during the first ten minutes of a show

Thankful for Ono Yo, handfuls of homemade granola, and butter.

Because that's what's keeping me from biting heads off today.