Neither my wife or me are native, our child started school last year. When we were introduced to the concept of "Tricky words" our reaction was: sorry, do you mean every single word?
Yeah, my four year old daughter is super into learning what words start with right now... I always feel so bad when I have to tell her she is wrong because of the weirdness of English.
I never consciously realized how many ways there are to pronounce "ough". And not a single one makes sense.
That said, I am amazed at how quickly he's figuring it all out.