Phonetically Speaking

At age three, Kyle has a knack for letters – recognizing them, writing them, even seeing them in the weirdest places. He was looking at our tomato plants yesterday, and pointed out that some of the stalks had formed a letter “A.”

Grampa is here to visit for a few weeks, and Kyle was outside playing with him in the morning. He drew letters on the concrete with sidewalk chalk. We asked him to write “Grampa.”

“How you do spell that?” he asked.

“Sound it out,” we said. I know it seems early for us to do that to him, but he likes it. He can actually read short words by saying the letter sounds out loud. The reverse doesn’t work as well, but he’s starting to catch on.

We said the sounds and Kyle drew the letters on the ground, astonishing his grandfather.

“Guh!” He wrote a G.

“RRRR!” He wrote an R.

“Aaa.” He wrote an A.

“MMM” He wrote an M.

“PPP” He wrote a P.

“UH.” He thought for a moment. And wrote a U.

GRAMPU.

The English language is so fraught with loopholes and idiosyncrasies. He’ll have to learn about them all someday, but for now it’s enough to praise him for his logic. He was very proud, and so was Grampa.