Reading Skills

DAD now makes time every day to read with the Twins, or tries to anyway.

Buggy does very well at it. She will get comfortable in Dad's lap and watch as he turns the pages, points to the words, and reads them. At the end of the book she will take it from Dad and sit there by herself flipping through the pages pointing to the pages and babble.

EJ, on the other hand, does not like to sit calmly in Dad's lap. He tries to disrupt when Dad reads to Liesel. He will attempt to close the book, or push her out of Dad's lap. He does take a book sometimes and flips through it pointing at the pages, but all too soon the book becomes just another toy to be thrown or chewed.

Boys it seems lag their female peers in literacy by 9 to 12 months. So Dad is not too worried about it now. It seems that they also lag girls in writing too, which seems reasonable given that reading is a precursor to writing.

What does concern Dad is Common Core standards. Standardized tests are written with the implicit view that boys and girls are the same. However, if boys consistently lag girls in reading, should not the test's designers take that into account? We segregate by sex in physical pursuits (e.g. football teams) in recognition of biological differences, why should we not do so for academic measurements (and instruction for that matter).