A Light Bulb Moment

This morning Emma, Joe and I went into “Emma’s Study Room”, which is where we go to work on Emma’s literacy program.  Emma asks to do this each morning.  Earlier this morning Joe and I discussed various strategies to help Emma with the handwriting portion.  Up until this morning’s session, the handwriting part has been extremely difficult for Emma.  Her anxiety level (and mine) have been counter productive – with Emma fidgeting, pushing her chair away from the desk and saying things like – “study room all done now.”

We began with the video – a short story about a man washing his car with a rag.  Emma seemed mildly uninterested, but watched the short clip and then was asked to find the word from a series of sentences, which she did with little problem.  She then was instructed to spell the word, again with few problems and when the computer portion was over we went to the handwriting part.  But today we implemented some other techniques that we had used in the first part of the literacy program, exercises she was familiar with and as a result had no problem doing.  We then moved on to the more problematic spelling of the single three letter word, but this time Emma had no problem!  As I watched her work, I could see that something had clicked.  It was an amazing moment.  It reminded me of the moment when Helen Keller finally realizes the water dribbling through her hand is the word Annie Sullivan is spelling for her.

I felt such unbelievable joy witnessing Emma “getting it”.  The look on her face, the smile… it was priceless.  To say that I am proud of her is a vast understatement.  I am ecstatic for her as well as proud, so very, very proud of her.

We continued through the other exercises with amazing results.  At a certain point I looked over at Joe and made a Can-You-Believe-This?! face.  And after we were finished I went to tell Richard, overwhelmed with happiness and relief.  What I witnessed was the beginning of reading and writing comprehension and it beats the joy I felt when Emma took her first steps.

As a side note, I will be adding the link to this blog on each post as various posts are getting picked up elsewhere.  For those who read Emma’s Hope Book already, just ignore and for those of you new to it, welcome!