BeAGoodMom wrote about learning about sight words yesterday (and I just realized that the new template doesn’t show which one of us wrote a post – will change soon I promise). My MIL left a really nice comment about how all of that works.
After reading that, I was thinking about Pookie reading the words and pointing at each letter on the inside of the stackable ice creams the other day.
One part in particular stuck out to me. When I was holding the ice cream and ask him how to spell “yellow,” for instance, he was kind of looking out of the top of his eyes as if he was focusing on a mental picture and then his hand was physically pointing at the air.
I think I know how Pookie is learning to read. He was seeing the ice cream and just reading the letters. He knows his letters backwards and forwards and he spends so much time with that ice cream and other books focusing on colors that he probably knows what they look like better than I do. He is also highly visual and I’m sure can hold onto visual snapshots better than your average bear.
There is a reason why I think that is so very cool, or at least fascinating. Ever since I was a little kid, whenever I talk, the words scroll through my head as a say them. Actual text. A lot of the time, I end up reading most of the things I say…in my imagination.
It is kind of strange when I think about it and try to focus on it. It’s kind of like when you focus on breathing. For some reason it is harder to do when you are conscious of it. I haven’t really thought about it in years, it’s just kind of there.
I’d love to take credit for that little oddity, if I’m right, but I’m not sure how I could have taught him that, and he sure didn’t inherit it from me.
For the record, I don’t know if this is an uncommon thing or not. I’ve never heard anybody else talk about it, so I figure everybody does it and so, like breathing, it just isn’t worth talking about or it is pretty rare and makes me just that much more special. I tried to google it and found nothing relevant. Does anybody know if this has a name or not?
What do you think? Do you see words when you talk or just images or something else entirely?
Related posts:
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I see the text in my head as well. All my life I have loved to read. So, I think what I see are memories from reading certain books. After time all of the type blends into one anyway.
This is a new idea to me. I need to think about it a while. I do not recall anything like this happening to me although I often do think back to the amount of time I spent reading when I was young. Now it seems like I get so much more distracted. I can’t get lost in a story or a book like I used to do.
I don’t see words this way when I talk or write, but when I do math in my head I DO see the numbers. Don’t know if it’s related or not. When I am writing one of my stories (or even a blog entry) a lot of the times I don’t know what I’m going to be saying until the words appear on the screen. It seems my brain and fingers are directly connected and bypass anything else. One reason I would rather write than talk. Talking adds in a whole ‘nother element.
I don’t think it’s common. It sounds like a pretty neat gift. The only time I see the words in my head is when I have been typing for a long time. Then, in speaking I might want to say “comma” or “period” during a sentence. T
hat’s pretty cool!
I’m an EXTREMELY auditory person, so when I read, I hear the words in my head, like somebody’s reading to me.