Dislearning

I am starting to believe that Amaya secretly knows how to read. I'm not sure when she practices this, but there's been some evidence that is hard to ignore.

As a teacher, this is hard for me to swallow, because she totally refuses to even try if I start suggesting colors, letters, or numbers. She actually puts her little hand over my mouth, or closes the book we're looking at. I am, in fact, starting to brace myself for the idea that I might have the kind of kid that teachers call home about. The one that doesn't like school. If I point to a letter and say, "What is that?" She will say, "THAT!" and then walk away. The only letter I have previously gotten her to recognize correctly was the letter 'O', and its not a consistent recognition.

A few weeks ago she was playing with a deck of cards (something we never let her do, because it's a mess, but I let her because we were staying at the Graham's house and toys were limited to the 2 we brought over, and the assortment of makeup I found her in on more than one occasion), and she brought me a card and said, "Here's the joker."
Yes, it was the joker. I was kind of shocked. I said, "Can you bring me the King?"
And she did.
Then I said, "Bring me the Queen."
She brought me the Jack, but I think this was to throw me off. And, NO, they were not in order in the deck.

Often Jake and I joke about this, because occasionally we'll be at the store or somewhere in public and she will suddenly name the box of cereal on the shelf, one we've never eaten, bought, or seen on TV. It's a bit eerie when it happens, actually.

Then today I was cutting her a piece of cake (her 2nd piece today, but of course I didn't know that) that had part of the words "Happy Birthday Bryan" written in cursive on the cake. She suddenly says, "There's an A!"
I literally looked at her in shock.
When I composed myself, realizing that there were lots of letters, and she could be talking about anything, and as far as I know she's at least heard that A is one of the letters of the alphabet, I asked her to point it out to me. And she was right.
I got a little excited, friends, and I tried to hide it because I knew she was going to just walk away in disgust any second now, but I really couldn't help pushing it a little.
I said, "Can you point to the P?" The cake was upside down of course, and in cursive, but she clearly pointed to a piece of cursive that looked like a P, even though it wasn't the actual P that was upside down. I said, "What about the H?" And there her little pointer finger went.
Before I could ask another, she pointed to the cross in the letter on the tail of Y that looked like an X, and she said, "And there's an X!"
I was totally dootzing in my pants.
Very excitedly I said, "Where's the S?" as I gestured to the name of the cake company on the box.
She looked at me very seriously and said, "Mommy, I don't want to do that," and proceeded to eat her cake.
I see some turbulent teenage years ahead of me. No doubt about it.