Stealth reader

“I didn’t realize Sophie was reading,” said a friend, the mama of one of Sophie’s pals, after Soph was over her house for an afternoon playdate.

“I didn’t either,” I said.

Soph had apparently been deciphering a slew of words for her buddy during their playdate. But at home, she gets mighty cranky if anybody asks her to read a word on a cereal box. Why is she hiding her Spidey powers? Why, I ask you?

Yesterday she opened a present from her cousins, which included a camera. She held it up and said, “Look! It’s waterproof!”

W-A-T-E-R-P-R-O-O-F. On the camera box.

“HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT?” we yelled.

Sly shrug.

“YOU CAN READ?” we yelled.

“No.”

“WHEN DID YOU LEARN TO READ?”

“I’m not going to tell you that,” she said. She walked away with her W-A-T-E-R-P-R-O-O-F camera.

Is this how it happens? I have been cruelly shut out from her world of reading discovery. It’s bad enough she’s got her little sister calling me ‘Mom’ now instead of ‘Mommy.’ My heart can’t take it. She started reading and I missed it. My little stealth reader. I could W-E-E-P.

33 comments May 22nd, 2006