Changing the Focus

I thought I'd be a bit more proactive in my parenting this fall and write out some goals to focus my days. My list included:

1. No more "spoiled crying"
2. Reinstate Chores
3. Daily Bible time and prayer
4. Daily story time
5. Recognize half the alphabet
6. Recognize numbers 1-10
7. Review Colors and Shapes

I think I've finally, really, honestly, truly decided to just throw my hands up to the idea of Lily learning the alphabet and numbers this Fall. (Didn't I just write about this?) We started working on the "Ready for the Code" workbook and we'd done Ff awhile ago, she could remember it so I moved onto Bb. Today we came back to the book after a week off and I said "okay Lily what is this letter?" "B" "Right and do you know what sound it makes?" "ba." I almost fell out of my seat with joy...it's working!! So I go back to Ff, Lily what letter is this? "I don't know" "It starts the word, fffish" "I don't know" "ffffriend, fffffoot, ffffox" "I don't know" "It's an F" "oh" as if she'd never heard of that letter before. So next page, more f's. "Okay Lily what is this letter?"(we just went over it) "I don't know" "remember FFFFFish, FFFFFriend, FFFFFFoot?" "I just don't know" and she throws her crayon down. Okay that was enough workbook.

I confess I have spent many nights and nap times researching different books/techniques to use to teach her these 'basic' things. After this morning, I was fed up - forget it she's just not ready to learn anything. Now this is where God helped me to see that I need to change my focus. Lily has learned a lot in her 3 1/2 years. She can name almost any animal and she's pretty particular (i.e. humpback whale/gray whale/orca whale, "that's not a bird, its a macaw"), she is really interested in nature and loves learning about God.

I decided to ask Lily what she wanted to learn about...she said animals. I was so focused on the stuff 'she had to learn' that I've been ignoring all the stuff she wants to learn. We started nature books, which Lily really seems to love. I still have to find a resource that I can pull out and read about whatever it is we discovered while outside (i.e. grasshopper, mushrooms...). Who knew there was more to life than the alphabet and numbers?! What a silly lesson I had to learn.