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Not enough or too much

Jordan starts first grade in just over two weeks, and I am rather panicked, thus contributing to my returning insomnia.

Kids are under so much pressure to learn a lot and early, and I worry Jordan is not where she should be, even though I worked with her a lot this summer. Fortunately, she does know a lot of sight words, but when it comes to sounding out words, Jordan acts as if she were in increasing pain with every sound she says.

But it is more than that. I worry about structure in general. Jordan and I had a great spring and summer together, but I fear I let her play too much. Some of you are probably thinking that sounds crazy; she is a kid. But how can I expect her to learn, pay attention, listen, be good, etc., for about 6.5 hours a day, when she probably has not done any one of those things for more than 30 minutes at a time a few times a day?

Ah, the discipline. Jordan, for the most part, respects, even fears, authority. I am hopeful that will continue into first grade. But isn't it asking a lot of her when I have not made her respect me?! To see me babysit my three cousins when I was in my late teens/early 20s, you would wonder how I could be so consistent then and yet struggle so mightily now. Perhaps that is the problem with being your child's primary playmate.

I used to be competitive. Loved to get trophies in 5ks. Wanted to be the best student, singer, teacher, editor, whatever it was I was doing. But once I had a kid, that side kind of faded away, and now I find myself comparing my child to others, hoping not so much that she will be the fastest, smartest, best-behaved, but that she can at least keep up or come close to.

I know I need to find the happy medium (except where discipline is concerned; I really need to work on that). I really should follow the words I recently read on a bumper sticker: Let go. Let God.

Let's hope.

Comments

Facie said…
Last week, I started doing sound-out word combos, which has worked pretty well. Jordan picks the end sound (I wrote down about 10 different ones) and then puts a beginning sound in front of each end sound to make words. I then have her write down the words she creates.

When I got to "it," I gave her the beginning letters or else she may have created some words I really don't care for her to hear right now. The same thing is probably going to happen when we do "itch" this week. But she does actually seem to be enjoying it. Yee-haw!

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