Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Caught with my mouth open.

6 1/2 yo Brighteyes has been extremely fussy lately. She tends to get that way right before a developmental leap. I try to hold my temper and wait it out, but living with a hair-trigger volcano can be hard on the nerves.

Yesterday my "I hate writing" child, who throws a tantrum over being asked to write a dozen words on a page, told me she didn't want to use the 1" first-grade paper. She wanted to try one of the sheets of lined notebook paper I use for their narrations. She then copied out the first ten lines of "The Three Little Kittens" on regular notebook paper, exclaiming how much fun it was. Her handwriting was very legible, and she had no trouble handling the thin lines.

This morning she copied out the next 7 lines, saying this was so much fun she must find more poems to copy out, before becoming stymied and throwing a tantrum over a line length problem.

My jaw is still on the floor somewhere. I haven't even recovered enough to look for it yet.

1 comment:

OhanaTribe said...

I can totally identify with this! My daughter (same age as yours) does this as well. If I push her she just pushes back harder until I drop it. And then a few days will pass and she'll ever so casually show that she not only comprehends whatever I was trying to teach her, she is way beyond it.

My dh and I joke about it. If we think she needs to be learning to add "4 + 8" she'll resist and fuss until we leave it be. We move on to something else. Then a few days later she'll hand us a piece of paper showing how she's solved "X + 4(Y) = (34*5)- Z".

This is, of course, an exaggeration, but that's the idea. And it's exactly what I get for assuming that *I* know what she needs to be learning at any given moment. My kids constantly amaze me!