to FIGHT or not to FIGHT

MY OLDEST DAUGHTER IS IN PRESCHOOL

I HAVE ZERO TRAINING OR EDUCATION IN CHILDREN

THIS IS ONLY MY EXPERIENCE AND OPINION, ALWAYS DO WHAT RESONATES WITH YOU

When news broke that my daughter wasn’t going to be attending school for the foreseeable future I went into major planning mode. I have a playroom that is perfect transition to temporary classroom. I immediately filled up a shopping cart (for pickup) from lakeshore learning center, got on every blog and Pinterest page I could find, and got to business. I am a realist, the schedule only included an hour of academic time. I thought how bad could one hour really be? I decided we’d do the most popular book on amazon and then practice two letters a day. I was even excited.

Week one went amazingly well. The hour was more like ninety minutes and it made the day go by quickly. The lessons got increasingly harder to teach and understand. The lessons include a section on rhyming, my daughter clearly doesn’t understand the concept of rhyming. This week began and Monday went ok, I mean its freaking hard to teach a kid to read, especially when you have absolutely no experience. The best of intentions haven’t stopped me from getting agitated, hangry, or impatient. Tuesday came around and Orly flat out said she didn’t want to “do school”. This is one of those moments when my response seems really important.

I have two options. The first is to force her to do school. I can use my power as mom to make her sit down, review the letters, practicing writing them, and then struggle through each chapter in the lesson. Yes, my daughter would learn U & V. She would probably be able to write umbrella after the lesson. Option two; I say ok, and come up with a backup plan. My resistance to allow option two comes from fear that I will have to play another hour, fear that the next time I ask her to do something she won’t, fear that I will lose power. This week I chose option two, I said ok, school is a privilege (which I truly believe) and if you don’t want to do it then you can play independently for an hour, the time we would be doing school.

Guess what, it worked. I mean she only made it 47 minutes but life isn’t black and white. We didn’t fight, I actually got some time alone. We transitioned to the next activity, a piano lesson, ok. It wasn’t perfect but I allowed myself to remove my agenda and change course because does a preschooler need to write umbrella. How do we decide when it’s something that needs to be pushed and when is coming together peacefully what’s most important.