Hanson's Ridge
This kid. So full of curiosity and spirit and will. One of my biggest challenges as her mom/educator is finding the balance between challenging her and meeting her needs.
At four, she asked me to teach her how to read. We started with How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons because it was the cheapest evidence-based approach and I wasn't sold on academics for preschoolers. It didn't work well for us and we shelved it. Looking back, that was absolutely the right decision. She wasn't ready, even though she wanted to be, and that approach wasn't a good fit for either of us. At the time, Himself asked me how we would know when it was ok to let her give up. I still don't have a straight answer to that question. Now, we are several months into her "Junior Kindergarten" year. We have been doing Logic of English Foundations, and some of it has been a whole lot of fun. She loves the games (and so does DC). We play card games and bingo, and a lot of it is really physical too. But. Parts of it have not been very fun for us. Handwriting, for one. I learned through trial and error to offer her choices. If she doesn't want to do handwriting practice, I'm not going to force it at this age. She can write in cornmeal with her finger. She can write in the air. She can tell me how to write the letters and I can scribe for her. We can skip it. She can use a dry erase board. She can use pen and paper. Or colored pencil and paper. I'm flexible. And it got us over a major hurdle. We finished Foundations A and moved onto B. She can read basic words. And she's just soaking everything up, and I'm in awe. But something else was happening too. When it came time to read to me, she'd get really goofy. She'd look everywhere but at the page. She'd make up words. Things got tense. The reading lessons stretched long, far longer than they were supposed to. I tried carrots and sticks (not literal sticks of course). We cuddled and chatted. Then I started noticing patterns. She'd read fine until she got to certain words--then she'd get goofy or quit trying. She was afraid. Afraid of making a mistake. And no matter how much I tried to reassure her that she only had to try, I wouldn't be upset about a mistake, it wasn't working for us. She was shutting down. She started fighting even the idea of reading lessons. We tried a couple of things: letting her practice reading alone before reading to me, reading to Himself instead of to me, doing lessons for a certain amount of time rather than trying to complete a whole lesson. Then, I lost it. It was ugly. I wanted reading lessons to be fun and exciting and a wonderful time to share. She read things so well, I knew she could do it, and why couldn't I make her do it? I swept all the materials off the table and into the box and stormed off. Not my finest parenting moment. She sobbed and told me she would read. I took some deep breaths. I talked myself off the ledge. It wasn't about me and what I knew she could do. She wasn't confident, and she felt anxious about screwing up. And here I was, yelling. Exactly what she was afraid of. I know exactly what she can read if she buckles down and focuses, after a prolonged battle. It's not about her ability at all. But if I keep pushing and shouting (which goes against my parenting philosophy anyway), it's not going to encourage a love of reading. After I told myself these things and took my breaths, which took a minute or so, I sat down on the sofa and called her over. I said that we were going to do reading differently for a little while. We were going to practice reading the BOB books over and over again until she felt ready. We weren't going to quit reading because she had been working so hard and I believed in her. We were just going to slow down. We would play some reading practice games. And, I told myself, I had to prioritize some other things for a few days. It's time to spend a few days reconnecting to my kid and mending the damage of the reading battle. It's time for playing games, coloring together, and reading aloud (by me). These are all still important things for a five year old. It feels like a school break for her, but it's exactly what she needs. Last night, we made dinner together. She was so proud.
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AuthorHi! I'm Stephanie Hanson. I live with my husband, Himself, on Hanson's Ridge in Virginia. Archives
September 2017
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