Today I Feel Like the Proudest Monkey

Maybe if you are a person of a certain age you might know a Dave Matthew’s Band song from 1996 called “Proudest Monkey”. It is on one of the biggest albums of the nineties, 1996’s Crash.

Proudest Monkey is a song about a monkey who faces adversity, perseveres, then moves to the city, and becomes “the proudest monkey you’ve ever seen”. At it’s core, it is light, laid back song about a monkey. Still, the monkey conquered adversity and became proud. Well, today I feel like the proudest monkey.

You see, sometimes the recipe that you are taught doesn’t work the same for you that it seems to work for everyone else.

I was taught in library school and later on in children’s librarian trainings that parents could raise readers by reading to their children and taking them to libraries. I heard this a lot. In fact, on the parent and educator section of the library where I started working for after library school there were books with titles like How To Raise a Reader, and Reading Magic. The company line seemed to be that if you have books in your house and you let your children catch you reading, your children will become readers.

This is where my mind starts to create fiction out of fact but it feels like people always told me that if I did all of those things, my children would never have trouble in school. It feels like I was told that if I read to my children and taught them things, they would love learning and they would always sit still in story time. They would neve question teachers and never be a problem in the classroom.

I could accomplish all of these things by spending time with them and reading.

I would become a gold star parent.

So I became a mostly stay-at-home parent after the first one was born and read to my children.

But that’s not how life works for everyone.

Mr. Man has always loved books. He loved us reading to him when he was small. He still loves being read to. We went to storytime religiously with him at first but He wasn’t that good at sitting still during library storytime. He smiled at people and crawled over to them when he was small. He made friends and tried his best to play with the children’s librarian’s CD player (she didn’t like that so much).

Now, he loves books and he likes collecting books. Sometimes it seems like he likes collecting books more than he likes reading them. But he does like reading them. He doesn’t always read left to right while reading pages in order. He prefers comics and graphic novels to books with just words.

However, last year, he had a little trouble adjusting to the rules in first grade. Much of the educational instruction last year seemed to be centered around review of the letters and numbers. Also it seemd to be centered around social instruction about how to behave during a regular length school day. (Kindergarten in our district is half day). He never said so, but sometimes it felt like first grade took his excitement about school away a little. At this time last year, I remember getting him to read aloud was like pulling teeth. (It was also required and necessary).

After first grade, it seemed that the progress that he was making in reading slowed down a little. More importantly though, he started to complain about having to read independently.

At the beginning of this school year, second grade, it was determined that he needed some extra reading help. His homeroom teacher suggested that he spend time reading books that were not graphic novels. She also recommended pointed we should encourage him to read books, that are not graphic novels, and that if he read the pages in sequential order it would help increase his fluency and understanding.

So we have tried to do get him to do this recommended way of reading once a day, but he still let him read for fun any way he wants to read the rest of the time.

We still let Mr. Man read graphic novels. He loves Dog Man among other things. We enjoy them together as a family when we read before bed.

Also, we have been encouraging him to read books with primarily text too this year. The thing is, he hasn’t seemed to like many of the book series that I was taught to recommend as librarian. He couldn’t get into The Magic Tree House, Cam Janson, or any of the other ones I was taught to tell emerging readers to read. He likes collecting Magic Tree House books though.

A few weeks ago I bought a Diary of a Wimpy Kid book at the used book area of a library. He has been working on reading it little by little. At one point, I doubted that he was actually reading it. I thought that he might just be carrying it around. Every day though, during the time I require him to read before school, he has been working on it. Also I have seem him read it in the car when it is not required reading time. Then this Monday, he told me that he finished reading it. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a series that I was never a big fan of, is the first novel length book, that is not a graphic novel or a “little kids book” that he ever read. I was so proud that yesterday we went out and got another Diary of a Wimpy Kid book

Then this morning when I told him that it was time to do our before school reading time, he told me that he already read for the day in his room. I told him that I didn’t believe him. Then he showed me that he was already on page 31.

I only believed him because he had put a bookmark in the book and he seemed really happy about his progress. A bookmark to me means that he cares about his progress. Then he proceeded to tell me that he really wants a reading light for his bed because it is hard to hold a flashlight under the covers.

I have never been so proud. It seems like it has been a lot of work to get us to this point. It feels like it has been years of working on this goal of independent reading and then all of a sudden he can take care of his reading on his own.

Maybe that’s how it is with parenthood. Sometimes things feel like so much work and like your child will never pick up on something then all of a sudden they can do it. Not that I am going to stop reading out loud to him, that’s too much fun for both of us.

I also feel so proud of Kindergarten Nugget this school year too. He is such a good natured happy boy, but school skills have never come easily for him. At one point during his preschool hood, we felt that we had to find him a different preschool than the one he and his brother both attended because it didn’t seem to fit his needs. He seems to not fit the typical mold. He is a unique individual; ahead in some things and behind in others.

He was never very interested in library storytime. He always responded well to the music that the librarian played but mostly he liked to walk around the room during storytime. For that matter, he has never been that interested in participating in group activities. During the only season he played soccer, he mostly left the soccer field to play in the woods. Even music class, and he has always liked listening to music, did not work out very well. In our covid era, outdoor music class, he was more transfixed by examining the air-conditioning unit on the side of the building or playing near the road, away from the group, than in participating with the singing, dancing, and shaker eggs.

I found it hard to take him to children’s classes as he neared 5 and 6 years old because while he was well-behaved, the younger children in his classes seemed to pay attention more age appropriately than he did. This was my problem not his but still it made it hard for me to navigate the stay-at-home parent world.

The one exception to this experience is that he has done extremely well this year in his before pm kindergarten swimming class. It has meant so much to me that he listens to his teacher and seems to very much be enjoying himself.

I had my doubts at this time last year about whether we should even send him to kindergarten this year or if we should hold him back.

I never should have doubted him though because he has done so well this year. He has seemed to thrive in the structure of a five day a week school week. I also think that his teachers have pushed him this year and that has made him more engaged in his work.

I am proud because I tested his with his sight word cards this week and he was able to name 20 of the words the first time and 21 of the words the second time. We have worked on the words a little over the past few months, but not a lot.

That’s the part makes me feel in awe. We haven’t worked that much together on learning these words. With many school skills, like writing and cutting, it has taken significant effort of his part and the help of other for him to master those skills.

He must have either he picked up how to read these words either in school or on his own.

Kindergarten Nugget is good at a lot of things like kindness, empathy, cooperation, and pretend play (as well as a amazing tie-down with bungie cords) but so far it isn’t that often that he is naturally good at something that schools measure and test for. So I am ticked that he is learning his sight words.

I am feeling a lot of feels about the end of this school year. Probably more feels about school and the end of the school year then I normally fell. I am tickled that this year has seemed to go better for both of my boys than previous years and I hope that they continue to feel accomplishment.

It is a sweet and bittersweet at the same time.

I love that they are growing up, but transitions are hard to wrap your head around. The boys are getting more independent and next year Kindergarten Nugget will be in school full time.

I won’t be going to any preschool classes next year. I am going to find another way to fill my days.

There is a little song that is on the show Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood that I like to remember: Sometimes you feel two feelings at the same time and that’s okay.

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