Alex has loved books ever since we first introduced him to them at the orphanage -- he loves just flipping through them, for starters; it kept him occupied for maybe six hours on the long tip back to the United States from Ukraine. Once he was home, flipping through a big book was one of his favorite things to do to relax. The bigger the book, the better! Our pastor even noted it at his baptism.
In the past few months, he has also begun to show some good indicators of pre-literacy, such as:
- Asking what words say
- Identifying certain letters of the alphabet and the sound they make
- Following narratives in stories
- Pretending to read by reciting narratives from memory, using pictures as cues
Alex's desire to read is great, and we have no doubt he will get there, someday -- but his progress is doing to be slow. One thing that the doctors at the Mayo Clinic recently figured out is that he has a visual processing disorder that prevents him from putting the parts of a picture into a whole -- so for instance, distinguishing the difference between the capital letter I and a T is challenging for him. His occupational therapist has started working with him to identify the tops and bottoms of letters and numbers, and to break individual letters down into their constituent parts, e.g., to look for the individual strokes that distinguish letters from one another.
In the meantime, we're enjoying watching his enthusiasm for books!
