I Don’t Know Much

But I know that frustration leads to failure, regardless of how smart a kid is.

One of the things I’ve been trying to learn is how to avoid frustrating my children.  Junebug is very easily frustrated, and very demonstrative in that frustration.  He cries, he falls down on the floor, he mourns.  He keens.  I’ve learned to watch his eyes for any sign of tears and to immediately back off and let him compose himself before we go on with anything.  Am I enabling behavior here?  I don’t think so – I’m trying read his signals and keep him on track – we talk about what is frustrating to him, even though he is very uncomfortable admitting that his is frustrated.  We may stop for a moment, but we always continue through the frustration, rather than giving up and letting something that is difficult defeat him.  This happens most often during guitar practice.  He wants so much to succeed, but it takes time and practice and why can’t it just happen right now?

Doodlebug is harder.  He has a way of hiding his frustration by just drifting off.  When he comes up against an obstacle, he just shuts down rather than facing it.  It takes all my energy to maintain patience with this behavior.  If he would just start crying and wailing, I could deal with it better, I think.  Crazy?  Yes.  True?  Also yes.  Sometimes I just wish I could get a peek into that fascinating brain of his.  Maybe the Cliffs Notes version of what it’s like to be the Doodlebug.  He drifts most often during any kind of worksheet, so that means mostly math.  Art?  Focus, baby…

 

Painty

I wonder (often) if we’ve made the right choice to homeschool the boys.  I don’t want to be the sole source of frustration for them.  Maybe we should spread that around a little.  But then I talk to friends whose children are in school and I remember the frustrations of our last few years.  Just yesterday, I got an email from a friend telling me about her daughter’s math test.  Her daughter is a smart girl and a hard worker and one of those kids that any teacher would be thrilled to have in class.  (actually both of her daughters are like that, but I digress.)  In any case, this 4th grader had made a B on her math test.  No big deal, right?  B’s are good.  Except she hadn’t ever made anything less than an A.  But that’s not the frustrating part.

She lost those points because in the word problem – something like Anna has 6 books, Bob has 6 books, how many book do they have altogether – she wrote “12.”

Instead of “12 books.”

Because obviously the most important thing in the world is to write “books” in a math problem.

Give me a break.  It’s math.  6+6=12.  The end.

Poor girl. What did she learn from that experience?  (We’re strong believers in learning from your mistakes in this house.  It’s a phrase we repeat 10 or 12 times a day.)  Well…she already knew that 6+6=12, so she didn’t learn any additional math from that.  What she learned was it is more important to conform than to be right.  It is more important to do things exactly as the establishment says, even if it is pointless and stupid.  She learned to just get along with everyone.  Don’t rock the boat.  Don’t challenge the way things are done or you’ll get slapped down.

Nice.

Because that’s how you encourage a child.  Right?