I knew it would come, but I didn’t think it would be this soon. We’re still in the honeymoon phase of this newfangled homeschool thing we’re doing. I was expecting to coast until at least Thanksgiving before hitting a wall with Bubba. Instead, we hit it at day 8.
I had asked her which she would like to learn first, money or time. She chose money. We’ve been working on it all week and she’s gotten really good about counting change and figuring out different combinations that equal the same amount. Today I was trying to get her to add dimes to certain amounts and give me the new figure. I let her use her fingers the first two times. Then we wrote out a couple of examples on paper so that she could see the way the numbers worked out in traditional addition format. I was trying to teach her to do it in her head after that by just adding 1 to the tens place in her mind. It was frustrating her because she kept adding it in the ones place. Then she starts dropping her head into her hands, slapping her head, moaning and groaning about how it’s too haaaaard for her and she just doesn’t get it. All of this while sighing and dramatically flopping her head around to impart her intense displeasure. I then became frustrated at her over-the-top performance and scooped all of the change back into the case and shut it. I tried to explain that if we only learned easy stuff and stuff that she already knew, then it wouldn’t be school. But I had lost her by that point. She was not going to focus on anything but her perceived injustice at being asked to do something that she wasn’t perfect at the first time. So, I asked her to clean up the desk and then meet me upstairs for some reading.
This is the one thing that concerned me about homeschooling her, our mutual stubbornness. Not to mention how easily we can become frustrated with each other. I know that my eternal-people-pleaser-type-A-personality-first-born never had these types of issues with her kindergarten or preschool teachers because this is the behavior she saves for her parents. I want to try to stay impartial when we hit these patches, but it’s difficult because I know that she can do these things. I know that she’s the only thing stopping herself. But, I don’t want to push her too hard and make her dread school time, either. I guess for now we’ll just stop what’s frustrating her and take it up the next day after we’ve both had time to cool off and regroup.
Later she called me into her room and showed me what she’d been working on…
It makes me think that no matter the frustrations, it’s all worth it.
(Oh, and the librarian didn’t even give us an extra blink or anything when she told us our fine was over $17 yesterday. That was nice of her because I was totally embarrassed.)
All Girls School 