Whispers

I believe I mentioned that Olivia is reading these days. I love this so much. I love sitting down with her in the evenings, our three books on my lap and showing her the title of each book and having her read those titles to me.

She only occasionally needs me to help her sound the words out. Last night, she sounded out ‘never’ all by herself. I am one proud mama, let me tell you.

But…she’s unsure of herself in this newfound skill. She’s not confident that she’s actually cracked the code of reading and so, when she reads to me, she whispers.

Which means at school, she won’t read at all. Because hello, last year she was whispering to her teacher about everything and she tends to speak loudly to me about everything.

The logical conclusion is that if she’s whispering to me as she reads, she won’t speak at all when she’s in school and asked to read.

That makes me sad only because it will be one more instance where I’ll have to say something inane like, “She does it for me.”

And they’re write in each IEP report, “Mom reports Olivia reads at home.”

I hate those little inserts. It feels like they’re patting me on the head when they put sentences like that in the IEP. It feels like they’re saying, “Okay, sure, if you say so. We don’t believe you but we’ll put this in there anyway.”

I want the world to see Olivia the way I do. I want her teachers to see her sense of humor, her silliness, her sweetness and yes, I want them to hear her read. I want them to know how capable she is and when a child won’t talk, people can’t know how amazing they are.

I know this will work itself out. We continue to work on it ourselves in our own home. I know that with good teachers and therapist working on the same things at school that we work on at home, at some point, Olivia will gain the confidence she needs to shout those words out. Or, okay, maybe just say them loudly enough for someone across the table to hear.

Not only do I want her teachers to know how amazing she is, I want Olivia to know how amazing she is. I want her to have the confidence to speak out in class, to know she’s cracked that reading code and want to let the rest of the world to know it too.

I’ll keep reminding her of how amazing she is and I have to have faith that someday she’ll believe it too.