It's been a year. Came back to confirm that it was totally fine to skip the last 20 lessons. Kid is happily reading chapter books now 😄

Love the mapwork idea!! and I know my son is for sure going to enjoy it! Thank you!

Pushing (gentle nudging) has been a productive and essential part of parenting an overly cautious little perfectionist 😛

Thanks everyone! We hit the pause button on 100 lessons and have been doing sort of a throwback with bob books and explode the code starting from book 1. My kid hates revisions in general, and I've been trying to build some tolerance. Explode the code has quite a bit of writing, and we like that aspect as well. Other than that, kid started piano lessons and greatly enjoys playing while reading and singing the lyrics. He's made great progress with eye tracking and no longer needs to point while he reads.

My son is 3.5 and gifted. He constantly seeks reassurance as well, and has massive meltdowns when he runs into words he couldn't read the fast way and asked to try sounding out. We've discussed many times how sounding out an unfamiliar word is a valuable skill and there is absolutely no shame in having to use it. But no luck so far. Frequent wake ups, yes. He's currently in a phase where he is scared of darkness, shadows, carnivorous dinosaurs, wolves, monsters and bears etc. That, and frequent tantrums, I think are both normal for a 3yo, and more so for a gifted 3yo with intense emotions and vivid imaginations. We had him evaluated at close to 3 by a psychologist and received no diagnosis other than giftedness. But I do believe he has anxiety issues. Bites fingernails and has some motor tics when nervous.

We are at lesson 78, and the last couple lessons were hard. Kid is still motivated to keep going, but there have been some tears and an increasing amount of frustration and anxiety. I have been debating whether or not we should switch to explode the code or phonics pathways at this point, but it also seems the last 2x lessons is where the kid would learn to apply what has been taught in previous lessons to read actual normal text. Should we switch, or push through?

Thank you so much for your advice! I’ll definitely try the things you suggested. I am fully aware that 3 maybe too young and we are ready to take a break any moment if we hit a block. But he’s doing so well with blending and other aspects of reading that I feel like I’m barely doing any teaching, yet he is really scared of potentially making a mistake and has very little confidence. Maybe I’ll also try supplementing with something more colorful and flashy. Thanks again for the helpful advice!

I’ve been using 100 easy lessons with my 3yo son and we are at lesson 31 right now. He actually isn’t bothered by the lack of color of the book, but seems more intimidated by the idea of reading alone - he can sound out everything fine and gets most of the questions right, but the story tasks seem to make him really nervous. Wonder if we should switch too.