Patience

All my life I have been complimented for my ability to be patient. I still feel I have this great quality, but I feel like since I've had kids (and a husband, too), it has been tested harder. Since we've been officially home schooling these past few weeks, I have learned that I can really loose it.

Then I realized that the reason we are home schooling is because we want our children to be able to go at their own pace and learn in their own style. I don't have to go by a book and I can be as flexible as I want. Since realizing that, I have not let W's tendency to space out, or his difficulty in paying attention to what we are reading, bother me. I just take it slow and we are both a lot happier.

I remember when I was teaching W how to read. He was about 2 when he started showing interest in the word cards that I had. I would try to teach him the phonic sounds and he would remember many of them and try to sound out a word. Some of the sounds he did not get right away. I remember feeling a tinge frustrated at having to be so repetitive. But eventually he got it, it worked and W is a master reader now! Children will rarely get how to do things right away. Somehow I keep forgetting that. W has this incredible memory! I have seen it and am aware of it, everyone he meets know this about him. If he is spacing out, he's bored and I need to step it up a bit, or make it more exciting, or take it a little at a time. Even if I have to summarize things FOR him, so he can get how to do it, I know he will learn it and be really great at it.

Patience is the key and I need to bring that side out of me again. I have been doing it for the past 5 or 6 home school days and it's been working in our favor.