It seems
about every two weeks for the last couple of months I have found myself writing
about how Polly and Pip are aging right before our eyes. Much of this has to
with the new school year and the changing levels of expectations that occur as
they move up from one grade to the next. These moves create quantum leap
moments when the kids are suddenly asked to do things they haven’t before, and
we have to figure out how to make those things happen in ways that promote good
long-term habits. For Polly last year it was adjusting to kindergarten and
learning how to manage her feelings after a long day at school. For Pip, it was
shifting his expectations for doing homework from the ten minutes every other
day of first grade to the thirty minutes every day of second grade. Both
challenges were at the time overwhelming and fraught with their share of tears
but thankfully in time we all adjusted to these new realities.
This year
Polly’s leap involves spelling words. Polly watched for two years as Pip has
done his spelling words – writing them out on Mondays, putting them in
alphabetical order on Tuesdays, going through them with me on Wednesdays, and
doing a mock test on Thursdays. She hovered over his shoulder through it all
and took turns calling out words. She even created her own spelling lists from
time to time. So when her turn came around three weeks ago, she was close to
ecstatic. The moment she got home she whipped out her list of twelve words and
did all the assigned exercises for the week right then and there. Then she
brought the list over to me and had us run through them three times to make
sure she had them all right. The next day she had us do the same thing again.
While I was
thrilled by her enthusiasm, all of this spelling required me to do some balancing.
Pip still had his words to do as well and I needed to figure out how best to
split my time among the both of them. This was particularly true on Thursdays
when both wanted to do their mock tests at the same time. The first Thursday I
didn’t handle their competing pulls very well. In the middle of doing Polly’s
words Pip came in ready to do his. Polly got frustrated at the interruption,
and Pip got annoyed because I wasn’t ready when he was. This in turn made me
upset with both of them for having unreasonable expectations of what I could
actually do.
The next
Thursday, after establishing a schedule beforehand, things went much smoother.
We started with Pip and Polly reprised her roll of looking over my shoulder
while I called out his words. Once those were finished we flipped around on the
couch and did the same thing for Polly. The whole affair went so smoothly I
happily ran through Polly’s words a second time so she could organize them
according to their first letter.
It was nice
having us all working together for a few minutes that day. It reminded me of
some of my favorite moments with them: the evenings in the winter when we
settle in on the couch and I read to them. Pip leans in at my shoulder to watch
the words go by on the page. Polly hangs out on my other side coloring or
fiddling with a stuffed animal. It has been a while since we’ve done that with
each other and it made me happy to have the spelling words bring that memory
back.
***
Pip’s
challenge this fall has been to take greater responsibility for organizing his
schoolwork. Every day he come home now with assignments in spelling, reading,
and math. At school his teacher expects him to write down his assignment off
the board each day, collect the proper classroom materials to bring home with
him, and get it all done and returned the next day. While he had the same
responsibility last year, the amount of material and the level of attention to
these details expected of him are significantly higher. The teacher doesn’t
remind him to get his worksheets into his folder. She doesn’t check to see that
he’s written things down correctly. She has a formal set of consequences
established for those who do not get
their work done on time.
While Pip
is eight years old and it’s probably time for this shift in responsibility, the
change is still taking some getting used to. Pip’s already had to use a
homework pass after he left a worksheet at school and had to face one of the
consequences when he failed to write down his spelling words after he alphabetized
them. He’s never been punished at school for absentmindedness, and this new
regime is requiring him to recalculate what it means to be a good student. This
is all well and good but a touch frustrating for me to watch. I don’t mind
having consequences for failing to do what you need to get done. That’s a
necessary part of life. However, I like it much better when I’m in control of
those consequences instead of the teacher.
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