I'm insisting on a bit of "homework" over Spring break -- partly as a dry run for summer, when I will want to keep her momentum going. Nothing too crazy, just 20 or 30 minutes a day, broken up between reading practice, a little math on Dreambox or IXL, and me reading her a picture book in Spanish.
Some days it's working but some days she's giving me INCREDIBLE pushback. So I find myself thinking, "I just made my kid cry by making her do Dreambox at a level beyond what the school is teaching her. I am an EVIL HOT-HOUSING PARENT! How did this happen?"
But here's the thing: the crying and wailing and fussing are about a power-struggle with Mom. I can totally see that it's manipulative -- she's exaggerating her upsetness to get what she wants. It's the exact same thing we go through with eating food that I know she basically likes, but she just doesn't feel like eating it right now and she'd rather move on to fruit. This is a strong-willed kid. Actually, "strong-willed" doesn't even begin to describe it. This is a kid who, when you try to teach her a board-game, will change the rules just so that they can be her rules and not someone else's.
She's been through this with her teachers at school, and they totally see through her bullpoop and don't let her get away with it. I had somewhat the same reaction at first ("She's too young! They're expecting too much! I'm pushing her!") but the teachers (who are awesome and whose judgement I really trust) don't seem worried at all. They think she's totally capable of rising to the expectations. And she has -- for the most part, the behavior problems at school have gone away. But when it's Mom? Whole different ball game.
I've been "bribing" her a little, 20 minutes of focusing on homework buys her 10 minutes of pure-fun games on ABCya or Starfall or Dreambox (which I also have mixed feelings about, but we kind of got there in a slippery-slope kind of way). Anyway, I'm thinking of going all behavior-mod on her tiny butt and using 10 marbles to represent the 10 minutes. Wailing and drama (which I'm careful to distinguish from real upset over something being too hard) means one marble goes away.
I keep reminding myself that I've been through this with this kid over and over, on different issues. Buckling her own seatbelt? WHINE FUSS FLOP THRASH DO-IT-WRONG-AND-THEN-FALL-TO-PIECES-BECAUSE-IT-DIDN'T-WORK. But I keep insisting, and then suddenly it's a non-issue, she does it cheerfully. Same with brushing teeth. Dressing herself. Carrying her own lunch-box.
But somehow, when the topic is academics, it triggers all that guilt about "pushing" and "taking away their childhood." I have to keep reminding myself that this kid will actually LOVE the intellectual power that will come with having mastered these skills -- she just hates being told what's what. Thank goodness I'm not homeschooling these early years -- I'd be an exhausted and self-doubting wreck!
