memory is a funny thing

yesterday was carschooling again. i let chana read the rashis all in hebrew and just ask me the words she didn't know. as usual, she didn't know the same words over and over and i suspect she won't be learning them anytime soon. which reminds me, one of the words in our current batch of pesukim is "bilti" and i know for a fact i drilled and drilled her that it means "not" and yet she does not remember it every time. (on the up side, I remember it now :-P)

anyway, i had her dissecting shorashim on one of the rashis. we've done the rashi a bunch of times and she keeps having trouble remembering that kallah is daughter-in-law and that was ok in the rashi, where it shows up 2 or 3 times, but now it's showing up in tamar and yehuda and i'm getting sick of telling it to her. so i said, i'd like you to remember this word.

this upset her so much (the dissecting of the words, which drains her of energy) that she cried she can't do anymore rashis.

i decided, since i was in the car, to practice empathy. what does that have to do with being in the car? well, a good deal of it is that the other 3 kids are buckled and don't need any energy at all (assuming they aren't crying). so i can think through my responses and aim for ideal rather than triage. anyway, i have long suspected that empathy is a more effective response (as well as kinder) than being harsh. and when i do it, the results are positive. i empathized, i didn't have any feelings one way or the other whether she continued rashi or whether she stopped (that, too, is key--when i have a vested interest in her doing a set amount, i end up pressuring her, to the detriment of our relationship and her love of chumash). after a moment or two, where she complained about how hard it was and about how she's not doing anymore, where i accepted her feelings and did not agree that she could stop, but did not disagree, she moved on to more rashis.

she did a couple of new pesukim. new pesukim are tricky in the car, because i can't see it and i can't help her break down words or phrases by pointing out of order which helps sometimes in the translation. carschooling is generally better for chazara or easy pesukim.

today, we started from the middle of revi'i. she mostly remembered kallah. those recent pesukim needed more attention from yesterday. it's friday, so we haven't done rashi and we may or may not get to it. she doesn't know the story or yehuda and tamar. i guess ari didn't tell it to her. or she was too young to comprehend it. she realized that tamar was heading towards where yehuda was. (this was a bit of effort, because for some reason, she keeps having trouble with the word "timnasa" ie "to the place timna.") she asked if she was going to confront yehuda about shela. i translated zona as prostitute, but she did not ask what it was. (though i'm sure i discussed it with her as we were talking about the lyrics to certain songs on the radio. come to think of it, maybe the words were more slang than the official "prostitute.") because i could see that she didn't grasp the subtleties of the crossroads, the veil, and the bargaining, and the word "come" to her, i explained more explicitly what a prostitute is. she was duly shocked.

she said, "they had those in those days??"