wrangling

well, i thought we started off ok. today i was in a mood where i just supplied chana with the words she asked for. usually i put more effort into trying to coax it out of her, on the (possibly flawed?) theory that the more neurons that fire, the deeper the pathways of memory. or i have her try to remember herself. it was going smoothly since i was just telling her the words, which got me thinking a. maybe i should always give her the words and b. does she really learn them any faster the other way? coz it definitely gets her more frustrated.

at the word "אדע" i said "what is the aleph and what is the shoresh" like i always do. and she started getting upset. and it went downhill from there. i think it finally blew up when we did "mispo" and i told her to look at rashi (we did it yesterday) and she yelled/whined that she can't find it. and i got annoyed and snapped at her to cut it out. (i had already tried to coax her out of her mood, joke her out of her mood, and told her gently that she's in a funk and has a negative attitude as soon as we start chumash, regardless of how it is actually going). i had had it.

what i need to be aware of (and i went through this phase with sarah, too, though i think it was age 11 and not 10), is that chana is hitting the point where when i speak strongly/firmly/harshly she is getting old enough and independent enough that she responds rebelliously. oh, yeah? speak to me that way? well i'll just slam my chumash shut and refuse to work more! and then we escalate. i (hopefully) learned from sarah how to quickly de-escalate the situation instead of making it worse.

i sent her to time out, she refused to go and started to go upstairs, i made it an issue, she backed down and went into time out (which probably means she locked herself in the bathroom so i can't "release" her).

i have 28 minutes left until i bring sarah to her regents. wish me luck in reconnecting with chana and possibly even getting any chumash done. we have 2 pesukim left to the aliyah and then a new pasuk. and a review of that rashi on mispo.

grr. i'm tempted to just leave it and do it hours later.