Molly's literary creations

[naomikritzer]

Over the weekend, Molly wrote a story, and a poem. (Which she calls a "polem." There's a very distinct L when she says it.) I almost posted them here last night, and then thought, no, I need to respect my daughter's intellectual property. So I asked her for her permission, and having gained it, now I am posting them to my blog. I am retaining her spelling but adding a bit of punctuation. (There are only two periods in the original, both at the very end of the story.) I suppose I could provide a translation to anyone who can't decypher it, but it's mostly not that hard when you realize that she can't say her "th" sound and so it comes out as "d."

Here's the story:

Ones apon a time dair wure sume chehjin: 4 of teme. Dair mom had died 3 yers, dair Dad 2 yers. The names ware Tom hoo wis 12, Pat hoo wis 10, Marin hoo wis 8, and Henry hoo wis 6. Now day ware on dair onn. Day sallvd dair onn priblams. Hire wate happnd. Day letht dair home to live in the woods. Day lived ondr the trees and lived happly evr athdr. The End.

She then provides an illustration that shows Pat and Marin in the woods, smiling big smiles and thinking happy thoughts. The sun is shining.

(I detect the subtle literary influence of Gertrude Chandler Warner.)

Here's the polem:

Dair wuse a cat hoo had a hat.
But dair wuse a rat hoo loved the hat.
AAAAh a bat went by the bat hateid the hat. The cat wore the hat.

She drew pictures of a hat, a bat, a cat, and a rat. (I assume that's what they are, anyway.)

Anyway, I found this kind of fascinating for all sorts of reasons. The first was that she wrote these entirely independently -- she didn't ask us for spellings. This is great. She has written things for a long time, but she used to insist that we spell out pretty much every word for her, except for "the," which sunk in at some point. (Which is why she spells it correclty in the story and poem, even though "they" comes out "day.") There's nothing wrong with a kid using invented spelling at this age to express their thoughts, particularly when they really WANT to express themselves by writing. Molly owns a children's dictionary and she'll use it occasionally, but dictionary use gets old fast when you have to look up every single word and you're trying to look up "they" under "d" because that's how it sounds when you say it.

I also find it kind of interesting that she clearly spells words by saying them quietly to herself. She does hear a difference between D and Th; I know this because if she says, "how do you spell 'dey'" and I say, "day?" she'll say, "No, DEY," in an aggrieved tone.

She can read every one of these words without a hitch. Not only that, but she can catch subtle mispellings when other people make them. (I can't find the post, but I'm pretty sure I posted here about an ad that was dropped on my car one time while we were shopping at Target. Molly asked me who had left it. I glanced at it and said, "Someone who can't spell." "Why do you say that?" she asked. I handed her the ad and told her to see if she could spot the mistake. She studied it for a minute and then said, "They spelled LOSE with two O's!") But spelling is clearly a whole different skillset. I find that really interesting.

I am also impressed by the fact that the story has a beginning, middle, and end, if a rather sketchy plot. I'm particularly impressed by the end; I first started wanting to write stories when I was five or six, but I spent years not ever finishing anything, unless I was writing it for school and an ending was explicitly required. And, I'm impressed that she tackled something that required rhymes.

Comments

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

I love Molly's story! (And yes, the Boxcar Children leapt immediately to mind...) I particularly like the "hoo wis" for "who is," because of the way it absolutely is spelled as it sounds.

Meg is in the phase of stringing together magnetic letters on the refrigerator and having me read them out. She will often ask me to spell out a word with the letters, and then swap out, add, and subtract letters to see what happens.

[naomikritzer]

Stringing together letters (either with magnets, or by writing them out) and then demanding that a nearby adult read them out loud is one of the pre-reading things that a LOT of kids do, from what I have seen. Molly did this, and now some of her friends who aren't reading yet are doing the same thing. "Hey Mom, what's this word?" They really, really, really want you to do your best to pronounce it, too, rather than just rolling your eyes and saying that bzetouishtpgal isn't a word. Which can be a problem when the word has no vowels...

[jiawen]

It's quite a cool little story. I like how they solved their own problems. That's almost a plot in and of itself -- "They solved their own problems."

I had a speech defect when I was young. I couldn't pronounce s's -- they came out as the "ch" in a correctly-pronounced "Chanukkah" or "chutzpah". (Hmm, I should probably know what the linguistic term is for that sound.) I used to tell our family dog to go get the "khick", which is to say "stick". I eventually got speech therapy for it and felt a fair amount of shame while I was doing it. Make sure Molly doesn't feel bad for how she pronounces things, okay?

[naomikritzer]

All kids these days get a pre-kindergarten evaluation -- they're supposed to have it at 3, but I procrastinated with Molly (actually, I thought the pre-K screening she got at the ped's office counted, and didn't find out otherwise until the spring before she started Kindergarten) so she was evaluated at 5. She told me afterward that we should keep an eye on Molly's speech lest she need speech therapy. Molly has trouble with /th/, intermittently with /r/ and /l/, and the evaluator insisted that she lisped on /s/ and /sh/. Given that it's totally normal not to have R, L, and Th until you're seven, I was a little surprised that she thought it was worth worth worrying about.

My next-door neighbor is a speech therapist, and she agrees with me.

I don't know any kids this age who seem at all self-conscious about their pronunciation. One of Molly's best friends is the daughter of the next-door neighbor -- a little girl who was adopted from China a year ago, when she was four. A. understands English completely at this point but her speech is difficult to understand. A. doesn't seem at all self-conscious of her speech, just mildly frustrated when she can't get the slightly slow adults around her to understand what she's saying. (Interestingly, I think her peers have less trouble than the adults.)

[jiawen]

I was a little surprised that she thought it was worth worth worrying about.

It sometimes seems like almost anything is lawsuit-worthy, and thus worth worrying about.

(Interestingly, I think her peers have less trouble than the adults.)

I think that sometime around puberty most people form a mental block forms regarding languages. "It is impossible for me to correctly pronounce Chinese" seems to be a common thought among a lot of people I meet, even if it's just subconscious. Like, even if they were taught by a perfect teacher and had infinite time they'd still be unable to do it on some level. And a lot of my puberty-and-after students in Taiwan seemed utterly incapable of understanding, for example, how tenses work -- so much so that it seemed like they were on some level unwilling to understand. There's probably something biological, too, but it seems like there's a definite mental component to it.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! That same example came up in my linguistics class this summer -- that young children can distinguish sounds they can't form, and will be terribly offended if you pronounce it the way they do rather than the right way. (The example in class was the teacher's nephew pointing at someone's foot and talking about a "soo" -- adult says "A soo?" instead of "A shoe?" and is met with exactly that kind of angry dismissal. "No, a SOO!")

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Wow! I'm certainly impressed.

Spelling is such an interesting thing. I have all sorts of theories about spelling, many of them hingeing on the fact that I know great numbers of people who are very, very smart, write very well, and can't spell to save their lives.

My DD has the same problem with /th/, which she still can't pronounce at all, and she also has difficulty with /g/ and /c/ -- these now come out correctly in some positions but in others are rendered /d/ and /t/. My middle niece couldn't say /sh/ for many years, and thus mispronounced her own name -- but, as you describe, would get very annoyed if anyone else said it that way.

[naomikritzer]

Molly's most obvious trouble is with /th/, but she also has intermittent trouble with /r/ and /l/ (more often /r/ -- she gets lots of /l/ practice when she says her own name. By the same token, Kiera has /r/ pretty much down.) The pre-K evaluator from the school district also said she had a lisp on her /s/ and /sh/, though I only hear that occasionally.

The district evaluator lady seemed to think Molly might potentially need speech therapy. I thought that was sort of an odd conclusion to draw given that it's supposed to be totally normal to screw up your /th/ and /r/ and /l/ until you're seven, and given that most of her classmates talk the same way.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

That seems excessive to me, too.

My little brother had speech therapy for a couple of years. But he was seven and still couldn't say /r/ or /l/ or /sh/ (or maybe it was /s/ he couldn't say ... I don't remember), among other difficulties.

These days it seems to be all about the early intervention -- nobody likes to wait and see whether or not the problem is really a problem, and I'm sure in many cases that approach is warranted, but ...

[naomikritzer]

EI for a speech delay makes total sense to me, because there are so many therapies for autism and autism-spectrum disorders now that will make such a huge difference if used early.

I'm not sure it makes sense to me with minor speech defects. If a kid has serious trouble being understood, then absolutely, intervention is warranted, but for /w/ instead of /r/ at seven? I dunno. I figure I'll start worrying about it if she's not saying Th by late next summer. (She'll turn 7 next September.)

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Very true. My brother absolutely did need the ST, and maybe even should have had it earlier than he did.

DD is perfectly comprehensible, though, so I think I'll start worrying at the point when (if) I notice she's the only one in her class still not saying /th/ correctly, as opposed to having only one child in her class who does say it correctly.

[joxn.livejournal.com]

Clearly she must only have trouble with voiced "th" ("they, those") and not unvoiced ("thin, thistle"), because she spells "left" "letht" and "after" "athder". So maybe part of what's confusing is the fact that "th" stands for two different sounds.

[joykins1.livejournal.com]

The impressive thing is that Molly's story has a plot.

Zachary will write something in "kindergarten spelling" and then ask me to pronounce it--not the way of the REAL word but the way he spelled it.

So when he wrote "THE pumkin is GROig." And I pronouced the last word "groyg" he thought it was hilarious.

[yankee-in-texas.livejournal.com]

I love that Molly will write down a story! So far, writing is very hard for my kids and they don't do much of it. The Boy in particular can't seem to figure out how to hold a pencil, so he likes to write on the computer or ...

Our refrigerator says IWANTOWOGCHTV. Yesterday the kids were offered a video but lost the privilege before it began, and my son protested via letter magnets.