Doubts

Since she's four, I've been hearing more and more than she ought to be at nursery. And that shemust start school soon. More and more and more. And I'm also hearing about friends' children who are reading, writing, hang-gliding etc, at the same age and younger.


It's hard to remember that Linnea responds badly to being tested and prefers to keep anything she's ever been tested on a secret. I know she can read because she's done both word recognition and letter sounding out - but she swears now she can't do it. And it seems to be true. Part of me thinks I've failed and part of me thinks she's working on some new skill to do with reading, where before she did rote shape-recognition and guesswork, she's now trying to figure it out from individual letters and she doesn't quite like it as well because she can see the bits she doesn't understand.

Praise is hard to navigate. It makes her fail on purpose.

All of this makes me think school would be a bad idea for her. But also that I'm a total failure, because goodness, a four-year-old who can't read! I could read at four. Loads of my acquaintances children can and do read at four. Where have I gone wrong?

And let's not discuss bladder control.