So here I go. I am the recreation of my father. At least that is how last night made me feel. My 6 year old daughter has landed herself in the same position as last year. She has spent the beginning of the year fooling around and not listening and now has fallen behind in her schoolwork. To the point where she has stomach aches and throws fits when put in the position where she doesn't know the answer.
Last night we started on one of three sheets of homework she has to complete by tomorrow. Not a hard assignment really. It is dealing with physical characteristics. "Find something bumpy", "find something shiny". All she had to do was find something that matched that characteristic and write the name of it down on the paper.
She has already told herself she can't read. Lovely position to put herself in. She did the same last year. So she'll do the work if I read it to her. I read the first half to get her going. However, the farther we went, the more concerned she was about how comfortable she was or if her pencil was sharp enough or that she was thirsty. I told her we would finish with the page first and then deal with the rest. I asked her to read the next part. Now she needed a chair instead of sitting on the ground in front of the coffee table. I had already figured out that she was avoiding doing the task at hand. So now I wait patiently for her to read what I asked. I told her that it doesn't matter if she knows the word, I want her to tell me the sound the first letter makes. It was an 'S'. She knows that one. She said she didn't know. Her tummy hurts. We had that checked out last year. She had Xrays and tests and blah blah blah. They went away after I homeschooled her at night (after going to school) and got her caught up with the rest of her class.
I have to confess I lost it. I have Girl Guide work left undone, I had Nervousness work undone, I have bills to review and pay and I haven't had two minutes with my husband since we got back from our trip. After she mangled and half-a** tried to read the next few. I picked up her pencil and homework, folded it and chucked it onto the counter and told her if what she wanted to do was play then she could go ahead, she was done with her homework for the night. Then I got up, marched out of the living room and downstairs to watch TV with my husband. Lina just sat there with a shocked look on her face. You know, the one with the "But...." hanging on her lips?
Anyway it wasn't five minutes later she came downstairs in her PJs and innocently kissed me and my husband goodnight "Goodnight mom, night dad" and promptly went upstairs to bed. I hate games. As soon as she hit the top of the stairs she burst out in tears and marched off to her room. The kind of attitude that reaked of "well if you aren't going to help me, I'll just got to bed then" All to spite.
So as my husband looks at me with that "what was that all about?" look, I get up go to her room turn on the light and say to her. "OK what are we going to do to solve this?" I was very calm by that time. I know what's going on but I can't quite figure out how to explain to her that I can't make things better for her. I can help her but it's she who has to do the learning and the catching up AND it's going to be alot of work. She wanted to know why I walked away. I explained that I can't do this work for her and she isn't even trying to do the work and that it was a waste of my time and her time for her to sit there and not even make an effort. That I know very well that all of the "I need a chair" etc was just putting off her having to do the job at hand. That I have come to the realization that she far enough behind her other clasmates that it is starting to affect her (i.e. stomach aches). That it is extremely frustrating to me to watch all of this happen and not be able to explain to her what this means. That daddy had trouble in school and no one cared enough to help him and that to this day he feels so bad about himself that he doesn't do things he wants to do. That discussing this situation with her teacher is not a bad thing, that she and daddy and I will do what ever it is we can do to help her learn but that she has to make an effort to try.
So I try my best to explain that to her. I try not to make it flowery. I tell her she is just going to have to get used to the stomach aches. The only way I know that they are going to go away is for her to get caught up and be able to function with the rest of her class. That it is like her piano lessons. When she gets a new piece it is very frustrating. It first she can play it. We count it out, we play it through, we break it into little pieces, we master the pieces, we put it together, we play it through, I play it with her so she can hear how it flows. By the end of the week, sometimes she doesn't even have to look at the paper, she just knows it.
I hope the metaphor made sence to her. UGhh. Lina is 6 years old. And very bright. She is a joker and a clown. I don't want to take that away from her. I don't want to lecture a 6 year old. I don't want her to think of me later on and go "man, my mom was a bitch when it came to school". But she can't read at her level. It's going to effect her for the rest of her life and we have the opportunity to correct it now.
My father was a tyrant when it came to school. I won't go into details, but let's just say I learned very early on how to excel. It was not because I was smart it was because I didn't want to get into the same trouble my older brother was getting into with my dad. It taught me something about the value of school. If I could get good grades without being so incredibly smart, then the system was falible. I figured that the most important thing to get out of it was to know how to learn. I also learned to teach myself. This has been my livelihood to this day. If I need a new skill I know how to go about finding how to learn about it. That is the only real skill that I want for Lina too. Good grades do not mean too much to me. However, she is missing out on basic skills and that means that her self esteem will suffer along with the inability to teach herself when she needs to. She deserves to know what it is like to loose herself in a good book and have it carry her to another place and time.
That's my rant for today. Now to add to my long list of things to do, I have to research where she is supposed to be in school, discuss the issue with her teacher, help her with her homework and get her caught up with her reading, writing and math. I should have just kept homeschooling her from day one. She did so well being homeschooled. I wonder whether I made things hard for her by starting her at home? She learns best when she has some say in directing her learning and she learns best one on one. At last count I think there are 32 students in her class.
When we homeschooled it wasn't perfect but she excelled. She wanted more and more. She asked me again, like last year to start again to help her at night. I don't mind. I like to be involved; but again I start to wonder. Isn't this what we pay for for her to go to school? The other thing I wonder about is, if anyone else has trouble, do their parents get involved? What about those who don't?
(sigh)
