Homeschooling Adventure: Day 3

Ah, the teasing taste of success.

So many good things about today, but it’s hard to believe the good.

Jeremiah finished all of his work, lots of playing dumb for short periods of time, but when brought into the light, he immediately switched it up. BUT HE FINISHED!

Yesterday, he read a short book on amazing plants. He really enjoyed it, and he read it out loud to our little friend G. He was so proud of himself that he read something successfully out loud, and it freaked him out A LOT. Anywho, I had him draw an imaginary plant of his own, and write a sentence or two to describe it. He did it, but it was small, sloppy, and the sentence had very obvious spelling and grammar errors. He had obviously put as little effort into it as possible. So today I had him redo it. He didn’t argue, he was pleasant, AND HE DID IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME!!! AND IT WAS BEAUTIFUL! I will have to scan it in to show you. I was amazed.

I am having Jeremiah work with the free version of Spelling City for his spelling work. He loves it. He is working on the short /a/ sound this week, and today he took the test and ACED IT! He had to think, but he got 9/10 right. The one he got wrong was a typo, as he wrote mad instead of man. He was so proud of himself…and then he freaked out. So we talked through the fear, which I don’t really understand yet, but am trying to. We took deep breaths (and I do mean “we”), and we did some EFT rubbing, which he has a hard time with, and he got himself back on track.

For Math, Miah is continuing to work with Mathletics. I’ve lowered his level, which you can change up to 6 times a year per license. Level 2 seems to be a better fit. Today he was working on counting forward patterns and counting backward patterns. The counting forward was challenging at first, but he picked up on it quickly, and quickly got 100%.  He found the counting backward patterns very frustrating, and then once he did figure it out, he amazingly kept missing at least 1.  I knew that he needed to know that I believed he could master it, so I had him keep at it. After some more breathing and rubbing, he got back to it and got 100% the first time.

And I told him I knew he could do it, and how proud I was of him, and he didn’t freak out….yet.

He made his lunch, trying to pull a couple things over on me, but I addressed them and the feelings behind them, and we moved on.

And then it came to chore time. He took over an hour to do his kitchen chore, which should have taken 15 minutes. Why? Well, the cover story was that he didn’t think I would let him buy movie time with his Miah Bucks because I was watching TV. So that then turned into that he didn’t trust that I would let him have his privileges, aka didn’t trust Mom to give him good things, which transformed FINALLY into the truth, that he didn’t believe that he deserved the good things he worked so hard for all day, because he doesn’t believe he deserves good things PERIOD.

It still breaks my heart.

Anywho, after a 5 minute jump on the trampoline with lots of sortof fake crying, and a little laughter when Mom tried to help him touch the ceiling, he pulled it all back together. He was able to purchase movie time, and is currently CHOOSING to do MORE Mathletics! (Update: He just did the counting by 10′s work ON HIS OWN AND WORKED AT IT TILL HE GOT IT ALL RIGHT! WHOOHOO!!!)

Lord, I know this probably won’t last, but thank you for the glimpse into the semi-normal.

Blessings!

Hannah

Leave a comment | 2 comments so far (is that a lot?) | Tags: behavior challenges, Being set apart, Education Everywhere, parenting, RAD, the hard stuff, The SAHM Adventure