Boo (aged 4.5 years) had stopped reading almost completely for about a year. She's had some terrible experiences where she's been called freakish because of her innate capabilities; e.g reading very young. Quite a few people sent her the message (some literally told her!) that she was too young to read or that she only thought she could. And during her short stint in preschool, she would comment that "kids my age are too little to read", proven in her mind, by that fact that none of the other kids could read, etc. In short, she got the message that there was something wrong with her and she adjusted her behavior and abilities to fit in. (I knew that she was still reading a bit, because she would occassionaly read a sign, etc, and comment on it.)

Now, she's finally starting to venture into reading again and using a combination of sight words and phonetic approach is rapidly increasing the difficulty of what she reads *AND* her comprehension is good. So she's not just decoding words; she's understanding at a pretty good level what she's reading.

Today she grabbed a book that she's had for a while, but never read. It's a chapter book in a series that she asked for. During the past year, we've purchased several of the books in the series with instuctions from Boo that she's going to read them "by herself". She took the book with her to her room, climbed into her bed, and came out about fifteen minutes later with a big grin. Then she read aloud a loud a couple of sentences and said, "I feel silly! I feel so giggly inside! Reading is great it make me feel bubbly inside."

I'm so glad that she's found her love of reading, again!