not stressing about reading

My awesome girlfriend from law school, Nicole, is an expert on many things. Remember her two part series on her son’s autism? Parts one and two for your perusal. One of her passion topics is reading and literacy in general. I was messaging with her one day about reading and when should SuperBoy really be really reading and what does that mean??? She was gracious enough to share her expertise with all of us today. So sit back and read her essay on not stressing about reading. Because I really enjoyed it and I think you will too. She also just wrote this fantastic piece over here. — I am a teacher, a homeschool parent, and perpetual graduate student. Looking into many homeschool groups, I see there is often a lot of anxiety surrounding reading and I know a lot of parents worry about it. Even the government is pressuring pre-school and kindergarten teachers to get their charges to read at younger and younger ages. This anxiety seems well-placed because reading is a foundation skill; if you can read, you can teach yourself to do anything else. But…I don’t worry about reading. Seriously! There is an approved-and-perceived-to-be-correct way to teach reading, and I’ll tell you the secret of that method, but first, I’ll tell you what the trained teachers often don’t know about reading and that you, as a home-based educator need to know in order to make sense of everything to decide when, how, and if you want to teach reading. Yes, I said if.…