LOVING TO LEARN / LEARNING TO LOVE

Ah….the baby’s been asleep for a while and I’m doubting that he will sleep long enough for me to finish a post. I should have…..well…no, I shouldn’t have anything.

I’m trying to not guilt myself into doing or not doing things and the fact of the matter is….I ate my baked potatoe while I leisurely browsed through my reader and anything else that caught my eye….yah, basically I wasted time, but…..IT WAS MY DOWN TIME and I’m trying my hardest to be okay with that.

Siah and the baby have been sick with a cough and runny nose. They are doing okay….but Jon and I…we are tired. Siah sleeps through the night, but hacks and hacks and hacks away. Judah on the other hand. He’s been up a minimum of 3 times a night crying and coughing and sounding Oh! So! Pitiful! He’s currently sleeping open mouthed on my couch and keeps coughing and coughing and I keep thinking that he’s going to wake up but he’s not…..which is amazing.

We’ve had a pretty strict schedule for the past two weeks and he’s actually been taking naps in the afternoon. I’d say that 4 out of 7 days a week, he’s sleeping for at least an hour just after lunch. I kind of “force” him to stay awake until after lunchtime. He’s usually a miserable mess by that time, but….it ends up with a little quiet time for all of us which is so nice.

We’ve been rocking through schoolwork in the mornings and finishing the “focused” stuff by lunchtime. After lunch we do arts or PE or if there was something that we didn’t get finished in the morning we finish that up.

We’ve been really working hard on multiplication. Its so foundational and something that Jeremy really struggles with. In the past, he’s HATED Math but this past week I asked him how he felt Math was going and he said it was, “Fun-ish?”

Although he had sort of a question to his answer…..it was still better than HATE!

I found a website called “Right Brained Math”

Check out the videos of the different times tables…..incredible!

Have you ever heard of this or seen anything like this? I’ve never ever seen anything like this. I’m well aware that there are patterns in Math, but I had no issues just memorizing the times tables and so I never needed anything like this. Jeremy is a completely different story.

The pictures and tables and patterns make so much more sense to him. He can make the tables up all by himself right now and even after 2 weeks, I can see that he is more confident in his math skills and as a result…..his self esteem is better. He’s not feeling so stupid.

This is where I get so frustrated. He’s not a stupid kid. He just has a different way of learning but when you end up SO FAR BEHIND the other kids because you haven’t mastered a concept yet but the class needs to move on to the next topic….and then its time to move on again and you still haven’t mastered the original concept……it’s no wonder you’d end up feeling stupid.

There are a few things that are really important to me over the next little while. I want Jeremy to WANT to learn. I want him to equate learning with fun! It is fun to discover new things and I want him to see life like that. I want to get beyond this current mindset that learning is something that you HAVE TO DO and IT SUCKS! I want him to learn how to type. His writing is atrocious and as soon as he learns how to type…we’ll deal with a few issues. His writing is illegible, most of the time. He HATES writing, printing…anything like that. And….once you learn how to type, you should be able to actually type faster than you can print. So, typing is important to me. Another big one for me is writing. I don’t mean printing but actually being able to get your thoughts out onto paper or the screen in such a way that it’s clear and concise and expresses feeling and emotion and get across the facts that are needed.

Currently, he pretty much HATES anything that I’ve listed as important…..which is mostly everything. But, I’m finding that between being able to explain why each thing is important and how it relates to him and his life goals, is making a difference. We are also working through an ADHD workbook that helps him to think through different scenarios and allows him to process them outside of the the pressure that an immediate situation brings.

On top of the stuff that we are doing “in house”….he’s also signed up for a Musical Theater class that he stressed over for close to 2 weeks, which when I peeked in on him in the class on Monday….his smile was bigger than his face and he was having a BLAST! There is also a Homeschooling PE Class and a Lego Robotics class that he’s taking as well. He’s excited about all of them, now that he’s done the first theater class….

I am already seeing little changes in so many areas and then….in others, not so much. It’s tough. I have to keep remembering that I’m working with a kid who has a learning disability and that he’s not going to just magically change. But, if I look over all at the big picture….I still think we’ve made the right decision for right now.

It’s tough. It’s oh so crazy busy and I have to be on top of everything ALL THE TIME or else CHAOS REIGNS.

Wednesday was a ROUGH day. I tried to take a video of him, but they didn’t turn out. We forgot to give him his meds first thing – don’t ask how we possibly forgot that, but we did – and he was a vibrating mess until 10:30….at that point, he felt so upset about himself that the rest of the day was pretty much wrecked. We did manage to get his school work done, but it did require some creative effort on my part. We managed to get through the entire day with only one bout of crying – his not mine….in case you were wondering.

In contrast, Thursday was probably the BEST day and he FLEW through his work with excellence….it was pretty incredible.

So, we have ups and we have downs. I continue to encourage him that he’s learning and having fun and that there is NOTHING WRONG with getting an answer wrong…it’s only an opportunity. An opportunity to learn and that’s what life is all about, isn’t it?

I’m hoping to instill a LOVE TO LEARN mentality along with the ever important LEARN TO LOVE mentality that I believe should guide our lives.

It’s in process….we are all in process, aren’t we? And that’s such a good thing…can you imagine being stuck where you are at right now….forever….no growth….I can’t!