Tag: failures

Acknowledging my limits: Super Woman doesn’t live here

Tracy1 Comment on Acknowledging my limits: Super Woman doesn’t live here

Super Woman doesn't live here

I’ve been busy here. Very busy. I’ve been busy learning exactly what all I cannot do, what is beyond me, what I don’t have time for, what needs to change. What a start to the new year! While most are acknowledging their potential, I’m starting the year by acknowledging my limits.

On one particularly hair-raising day, I was loading the dishwasher and trying to catch up in the kitchen while wrestling Littlest out of the dishwasher and answering one of Oldest’s “how does this work” questions. My daughter came into the chaos with a broken toy she wanted me to fix but which was beyond fixing. When I broke the news to her, she asked me why I couldn’t fix it. And in exasperation I exclaimed, “Because I’m not SuperWoman, believe it or not!”

To which my ever-so-knowledgeable-almost-seven-year-old replied, “I think it’s WonderWoman, Mom.”

Yeah, I’m not her either.

I’m openly acknowledging my limits here, folks. There are things I simply can’t do. There are things I’m failing at. There are things that will just have to wait.

One of the things I tried and then quit over the Christmas break was potty-training Littlest. The other two were trained by 18 months, so in my mind I’ve really felt guilty and “behind” for not having even started with Littlest while his 2 year birthday looms only a month and a half away. So we gave it a try with one week to get it going before I headed back into our homeschool routine. Big mistake. Totally set myself up to fail. And by our first day of trying to homeschool and potty train, I knew it, too. I acknowledged my limits and put the Little Stinker back into his diaper—with a huge sigh of relief from both of us.

Our homeschool curricula and schedule is another area I’m acknowledging my limits. (More details to come.) But suffice it to say that I’m not SuperWoman, or WonderWoman, or whoever she is. I’m only human after all. And I suppose, it’s about time I realized it.

 

A Successful Lesson in Failure

Tracy

“By allowing my child to fail, I was teaching him about success.”

I actually confronted the issue of failure recently with my kindergartener. In our second year of homeschooling, he hadn’t really had to face any degree of failure before.

Then, we started to struggle with addition, and my default-plan of letting my son choose his best papers to show his father wasn’t giving my husband a complete picture of how we were really doing. As I talked over our struggles with my husband, he was a little confused; after all, he saw only success and mastery. I decided I’d better make some changes to my default-plan. And that’s what led to my discovery that I was failing to truly teach about failure.

The next day, my son worked a math sheet and missed several addition problems. Together we talked through the right answers to the problems that I had checked. He reworked the problems with me and then I broke the news to him: “We’re going to show Daddy this page, because he needs to know what we have trouble with as well as what we’re doing well in.” Immediately my son burst into tears. Suddenly, I understood the unintentional lesson I was teaching my son.

Inadvertently, I was teaching him that only success brought reward, that only perfection brought the attention that he wanted. I wasn’t giving my husband the opportunity to praise my son for determination or perseverance; my son was only receiving his daddy’s praise for perfect papers. It wasn’t a lesson either my husband or I had planned to teach, and it definitely wasn’t our view of success. But regardless, my son had already shaped the idea in his head that approval was gained through perfection.

Daddy came home that day, and my son sheepishly showed him the marked-up paper. And the most beautiful lesson unfolded: a lesson of love despite imperfection, a lesson of approval for a best effort, and a lesson of praise for character rather than performance. As I watched my husband and my son interact, I couldn’t help but wonder at how close I came to missing out on this moment.

What if I had chosen to show the paper to my husband without my son’s knowledge? What if I had caved to my son’s tears and decided not to show that paper at all? What if I had continued with our trend of only showing off the best?

My son would probably not have been scarred for life had we not addressed the issue of failure in this way; but then again, he might very well have developed an attitude of success vs. failure that would begin to shape his future.

By allowing my child to fail, I was teaching him about success. (<Tweet This)
It was a valuable lesson for all of us, and not one I would have ever thought to pencil into the curriculum or schedule into my lesson planner.

Room for Improvement

Tracy2 Comments on Room for Improvement
Our start to homeschooling last year began with a rocky start, a long break for re-evaluation, and then a much more successful second attempt.
And this year—well, it hasn’t been without it’s own adjustments. It seems that everyday, I’m tweaking our schedule, our system, and our material. And everyday, I’m closer to where I’d like to be. Of course, there are those days when success comes to a screeching halt and triumph throws a tantrum in my school room floor. But then, I call it a day, re-evalutate (again), and tweak a little bit more.
It’s been in the midst of all that tweaking that I’ve come to appreciate a few of the opportunities that come from the fine-tuning:
1. Involving others in the solution. Sometimes a situation is more than I can handle on my own. That’s a tough reality to accept. But I can’t educate my children by myself. And yet that humbling reality leads to a much richer discovery in the help I receive from others.
My husband has been one of those heroes, coming in to save my day. Discussing the school day with my husband and including any frustrations or challenges I’ve faced allows him to stay connected with the family. And his objective advice on those situations has, on many occasions, been exactly what we all needed.
My mom has also been a huge contributor. Having homeschooled me and my two siblings, she has the perspective and retrospection that I often lack. From her, I get to hear what she found helpful and what she would have done differently.

Other homeschoolers also offer a wealth of wisdom. I interact with internet homeschool groups and even occasionally send questions to my favorite bloggers. Their perspectives and advice have often been revolutionary for me. And the beauty of the internet is that it doesn’t matter that they are homeschooling all the way across the country; they can instantly become my cyber-neighbors.
2. Realizing my own short-comings. I’m not perfect. And facing that fact, that I could be the one at fault and not my student, is extremely helpful in a couple of ways. First, it allows me to be more patient with my children’s short-comings (especially when I see that they’ve inherited those faults from me). Second, it forces me to depend on a Strength outside of myself. For when I am weak, then is God’s strength most evident. Both my children and myself are able to see the Lord answer prayer and become a vital part of our homeschooling day.
 
3. Learning and understanding more than ever before. I’ve heard many times that you learn a subject best when you begin to teach it. Whether that subject is phonics and reading or modern art and poetry, teaching forces you to learn. Like the mother bird digesting the food for her chicks, I must digest every fact before I present it. And that is one thing I want my children to see: that you never outgrow learning.

 
4. Discovering who my children really are. I’ve learned more about my children and their personalities in the last several months of schooling them than ever before, in spite of hours of playing blocks and capturing imaginary bad guys. I see how they react to challenges. I see their response to success. I see what does and does not motivate them. And I see every time their eyes light up with understanding. I’m a part of nearly every moment of discovery, and that does more than just create a special bond. It also prepares me for my role as a parent.
Taking my lessons from the school room, I better understand what will provoke my child to wrath and frustration. I have keener understanding of what motivates and inspires my child. And with that knowledge comes a higher accountability to make the most of the opportunities I have with each child to nurture and admonish in the Lord.
5. Recognizing that homeschooling is not a place or state of being but a process and a journey. It’s not about where we are educating; it’s about how we are educating. It’s about having the opportunity to make those adjustments rather than to helplessly look on while a child stumbles through learning. It’s about the privilege of taking a breather together and facing the challenge once more, united rather than at odds. It’s about having the means to administer the changes that are necessary.
Heading into our second year now, I’m certain we will constantly be making adjustments. But I want to see those adjustments as more than just rescheduling recess or pulling out a new activity. The changes do help my child to learn better, but they also provide an opportunity for me to learn as well.

Discovering what works

Tracy

For this year, I went ahead and purchased the A Beka Kindergarten Handwriting for manuscript. It has saved so much time compared to making my own sheets, more than I even thought it would. However, I was really surprised at how small the lines were! I really thought the lines were that size in first grade.

My son does fine with the individual letters and even the individual words, but the sentences, all crammed into one line, have been a real challenge for him. My first clue was that his handwriting pages started to get really sloppy and took him forever to complete, and then it seemed as though he’d forgotten even how to form the letters sometimes. But when I watched him, I realized why.

His first word was fine, but come the second word of the sentence he was already squished right next to his starting dot. So when he tried to start the next word, he had no room and had no idea how to form the letter.

After the fourth time of erasing that line and trying again, I finally had recognized the problem. I got out my tablet paper and told him to copy the sentence there instead. What had been frustration and agony turned to absolute relief! He finished the sentence without the aid of any of those annoying red starting dots. And with the larger lines, his letters had room.

Of course, we’ll still need to work on spacing the words and eventually move to those smaller lines. But you should have seen the zest with which he tackled that page!

I’m writing about it because I think it was a huge learning experience for me, recognizing the symptoms of a problem and finding the solution. Someone once told me that if you look into the eyes of a child you are teaching and they’ve lost their spark, stop and come back to it another day. But coming back to the same problem day after day, might not always be the solution. Sometimes, it might be taking a step back to the last place of success.

After all, we’re all motivated when we feel successful.