The gift of spelling

Chance has a gift. He can spell. I mean really really spell. Some people are just good at spelling and Chance is one of them. I remember reading once that good spellers are ALWAYS good readers - the two go hand in hand. Chance does love to read. Sometimes way later than he should, in fact. He'll get engrossed in a book and read in bed long after he should be sleeping.

What amazes me about Chance's spelling though, is that Chance has not heard the words all of his life like I have. He could not sound them out in kindergarten the way that I did because Chance wasn't hearing the subtle sounds in all of the words. For many years Chance wasn't hearing all of the subtle syllables of many words. Yet, here he is an incredible speller. He can spell words he doesn't know the meaning of. He'll spell the word perfectly than turn to me and ask,"What does that word mean?"

Since Chance has therapy every Friday and thus misses the spelling tests, the teacher and I were discussing what we could do to help Chance earn points for the tests he misses. She wondered if she should just exempt Chance from the last two spelling tests since he was in speech therapy and the term was now over. I told her that one day when she was sick and there was a substitute, the teacher had passed out a list of several hard words for the kids and had them test each other and then write down the words they missed to practice. Chance missed two words out of at least 50 words. Some of the words he spelled correctly and then turned to me and asked,"What does that word mean?"

In a bold display of confidence in my boy, I told the teacher that she could probably give Chance the spelling test right then and he would do O.K. So, that is what she had me do. While she was in the corner of the room gathering papers, I administered a spelling test to Chance. He aced it with 100 percent.

Good heavens. How do you become an expert speller when you are deaf? I heard words just fine in school, yet I didn't always get them right. Even when I slowly repeated the words in my head or whispered them to myself as I sounded them out, "annoying" or whatever the word may have been.

Yet Chance who doesn't have the experience with hearing words that I do, can spell like a pro. It is an amazing phenomenon.