I know I made a fair few comic books of my own when I was a little kid, and I struggled to come up with a story, spell it correctly, draw all the correct panels & splash pages, colour it all in, bind it in a suitable fashion, and then try not to hate it when I finally finished. And low & behold my kids do the same thing with zero prompting from me. I see the spark of an idea, and then the crushing weight of what it takes to complete the project if you want it to be exactly as you envision it, and then the building frustration when the corners figuratively start to peel on you from the accumulation of minor errors. Ah that brings back memories. There are few self inflicted wounds quite like seeing how far off your vision you are when it comes to your own execution of said artistic vision. We are truly, our own worst critics.
As I sit here, both kids are hard at work, writing, drawing and colouring their comic books. When they aren’t fighting over crayons, or wigging out about how their art is progressing it almost feels like a great morning. I’m just happy that they have found something to occupy themselves for a few minutes so that I don’t have to entertain them.
I did build a deck of flash cards again last night to aid my youngest on her way towards early primary reading. And we are close to discovering whether the eldest has a LD regarding reading. We are trying lots of ways to build her confidence when reading. She seems to forget words of all lengths, and starts to panic when she has to read out loud. She can remember something like Cretaceous, but forgets words like who, when, and, and if. I don’t get it. But I’m no educator, and I don’t deal in child psychology either. She isn’t transposing numbers or letters, so likely not dyslexia. As far as my best guess goes. She does well in math, and listens in class, and is otherwise participatory in nature. Just the reading is lagging behind. She is several levels back of her peers (those that aren’t also struggling with reading anyway). I was happy to hear that her reading had progressed to where it is now, because she plateaued at a double digit level for two or more years. Thanks Covid and online classes! So yes, she can read, and does so, but just not at as high a level as she needs to to not continue to struggle with it as she moves on. But we are building a plan, and getting her extra help where any is available. We have hoops to get through in order to get her assessed by an academic type.
I know that I disliked reading a great deal in my youth, I was going on twelve before I actually enjoyed reading a full novel. I still have the first novel my mum bought me. It was a BattleTech brand novel about fighting robot mechs, war, treachery and violence. And I never looked back after reading it. I then read about Mortal Kombat, The Death of Superman, and the original Jurassic Park novel. Don’t quiz me on those publishing dates, they stick out in my memory in regards to reading. Plus a whole slew of Dragon Lance books, but that wasn’t until 1994 when we moved to Erin On, from Scarborough. So my own journey into reading started a lot later than my teachers had been pushing for. So the kid, she comes by it honestly. But once we get the reading to be less of a panic inducing activity, we have about seven hundred or so books that she can read if she wants to. Of all sorts of genres, lengths and difficulty levels. Science fiction, non fiction, fantasy, romance, poetry, technical, crime, humor, murder mystery, violent blood soaked horror, arts, historical and wood working to name most of our major areas of interest.
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 