Milestone

I am not bragging, I am simply stating that my child reached a milestone on Thursday. She read a word with no help from me in a manner that makes me suspect that she has been holding out on me. Now i hope that I am not the only parent who suspects that our children are actually much more capable than we realize and they are keeping it under wraps because they are annoyed that their parents, once aware of unspecified talents, will treat them like trained monkeys.

We were in the library and there was a gas can sitting by the fish tanks. She asked why there was gas in the library. I replied that it was not gas, but what was in the can was written on the side and she could read the word to figure it out. I urged her to sound it out. She flashed the annoyed look that she always gives me, claimed that it was too hard and asked me to read it to her. I refused and walked away. Watching out of the corner of my eye, I saw her look at the can, sound out the first half of the word, turn and say, "Mommy it's just water."

Here is where I must shamefully admit that I burst out into tears practically hug tackled her while simultaneously dialing her father to tell him that Olivia read her first word. I say shamefully because deep down I know that my child can't really read, she got half the word, took one look at the fish tank and assumed that the "wa" in question was probably water.

I am going to take it as a milestone though because if reading is anything like walking, crawling, talking, or any other milestone she has accomplished thus far she is going to bust out reading whole books like three months from now confirming what I already knew all along. She is no trained monkey.