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Squiggly lines

What does writ­ing look like to some­one who can­not read or write?

The image you see here was cre­at­ed by my three-year-old grand­son, Zeke. It is his attempt to make a book.

Zeke's book

Zeke is read a lot of pic­ture books by his par­ents. More­over, his sev­en-year-old sister—in first grade—is excit­ed about learn­ing to read and write. So Zeke has a lot of expe­ri­ence with writ­ing, but has vir­tu­al­ly no com­pre­hen­sion of how to make sense of it. Even so, here he is attempt­ing to repli­cate writing—all those squig­gly lines.

For those of us who read, who have, more or less, mas­tered the art of decod­ing the sym­bols we refer to as the alpha­bet, I think it’s hard to grasp what a per­son sees when they can make no sense of writ­ing.  The clos­est  I have come to that—as an adult—occurred when I walked through the streets of Tokyo, pass­ing through a ver­i­ta­ble for­est of writ­ten Japan­ese of which I could make no sense what­so­ev­er. Still, I knew it was writ­ing and knew, too, it was my igno­rance of Japan­ese that pre­vent­ed me from reading.

But Zeke does­n’t grasp how our writ­ing works. Nonethe­less, he is repli­cat­ing what he sees. Those squig­gly lines.

But even as I write this, things are chang­ing for Zeke. His dad (my son) tells me Zeke rec­og­nizes a Z when he sees one. In oth­er words–so to speak–the end of our alpha­bet is the begin­ning of read­ing for him. I’ll miss the squiggles.

6 thoughts on “Squiggly lines”

  1. No wor­ries. You have many years of squig­gles, attempt­ed let­ters, and inven­tive spelling ahead of you. And then you can enjoy the tra­di­tion­al­ly writ­ten mas­ter­pieces as well!

    Reply
  2. I love Zeke’s sto­ry. It’s fun­ny to think about it, though, because, as you said, he is repli­cat­ing what he sees.

    Which real­ly makes the amount of pain and suf­fer­ing books put me through sound com­plete­ly ridicu­lous from this distance.

    Reply
  3. Hel­lo! My name is Elle and My friend Brit­tany. We are 11 years old. That is just adorable what your grand sun has made! I wish I was as tal­ent­ed as him! 🙂 Are you teach­ing him how to write just like you, the amaz­ing tal­ent­ed writer? How did you over come your Dysgraphia?

    Reply
  4. I have been a believ­er for 45 years of teach­ing (because it’s been proven over and over) that chil­dren write before they read. Did you ask Zeke to tell you his story?

    Reply

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