We have been so busy I haven't had the energy to put anything in writing. Last weekend we had an excellent visit with Tom's Uncle and his family. They were the perfect house guests. One, they didn't stay in the house (they set up their pop up in the yard). And two, it was just nice to have people to communicate with without any expectations of entertainment. They also got to spend a morning with us doing school. The kids had a lot of fun doing experiments with electricity together.
For the past four days I've been mulling over solutions to two roadblocks that we're encountering. First is math. All the workbooks have entirely too much repetition and way too many problems for a six and eight year old to do at their ability level. So I spent all day yesterday going through lesson by lesson picking out specific problems for each child to work on each day for the next three weeks. Also, I made up a game using math facts for us all to play (instead of just boring flash cards). These aren't math facts like 3 x 4 = ?, but are things like "what is the formula used to find the area of a circle" or "what is the least common multiplier of 3 and 5?" The idea came from a fantastic list that Heather sent me, Thanks, Heather! Hopefully, playing this game often will help them with their problems.
Another issue with math is that I feel like they need to be more independent while they're working on their problems. In order to accomplish that I'm going to show them how they figure out where each problem came from in the book. Then they can look back on their own if they don't remember how to do something. After they finish their problems, then I can sit down with them and discuss anything they got wrong.
Our second roadblock is an emotional block. I've known for sometime now that whenever Zoë starts learning something new that she thinks is difficult, like a new math lesson or a new song on the piano, or if she doesn't know the answer to something, she can sometimes shut down completely. She will throw herself onto the floor, hide under a table, and refuse to communicate at all. Aiden occasionally does this too, but it is a more frequent behavior with Zoë.
It breaks my heart when this happens. If I have patience at the time, I can talk them out of it, and get them back to work. The problem is that the more this occurs, the less patience I have dealing with it. It's not their frustration with learning something new that bothers me, it's the inability to communicate what's going on. I simply can't help if they can't tell me what they don't understand or how they're feeling.
I think that this is tied somehow to an idea that they have that people love them because they are "smart." So if they don't know something, that means they aren't that smart and therefore people love them less. Of course that simply isn't true, but if you've spent your entire life hearing from strangers and people you know things like "wow, you're really smart" it starts to be absorbed. I've done a lot of research on this idea, and have been working hard to avoid statements like that, but I cannot control what others say to them. Ultimately, why it happens doesn't matter though. I need to find a way to change the behavior.
So I'm working on ways to avoid the emotional shut down. I talked a little bit with Zoë about it this morning and she had some ideas that we're going to try. I also know that the problem is worse if she's tired or hungry, so we're going to structure the day so that she's doing the things she thinks are the most difficult first. I know this will be a slow process, but we'll get there.
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