Reading and Writing

Jonah wrote his name for the first time today. Here's an example (not the first time, but the first time he showed me when I got home from work):

I definitely do not understand motivation behind reading and writing. I remember back in kindergarten when I couldn't read the jokes on those little wax Dixie cups. My neighbor, Jessica could. I wanted to know how to read and somehow I figured out how to do it.

Jonah has known his alphabet for over a year. He can, with a little prompting, sing the ABCs backwards. We played word games at the dinner table every night (I'll give you this alphabet cookie after you tell me three words that start with this letter). He recognizes some words on a page and can get pretty far sounding them out. He tells us, though, that he doesn't want to learn how to read. "Hop on Pop"? Naw.

Is this a control issue, fear of failure, or something else? My guess is that it comes down to basic incentives. Jonah's incentives not to read outweigh his incentives to read. If he learns to read, he risks -- or he thinks he risks -- less one-on-one time reading with mom, dad, or his teachers. If he learns to read, he'll know what traffic signs mean (not very useful, since he doesn't drive) and he can read any book he wants (not an issue, because we pretty much read anything he wants to him). But this is total speculation.

There's no rush, right? I'd love it if Jonah could read to his infant sister, but we can cover for him there. Part of me thinks I want Jonah to learn to read and write quickly just so I can brag about it...kind of like I'm doing in this blog post. But really, I want him to read and write because he wants to. Right? Right?