The Wall of Awful and Davening

Tefila is not progressing as I would have hoped. Sure, we could medicate and maybe he could learn it more quickly. But he's going "at his own pace" and that is an exceedingly slow pace, indeed.

We've been arguing about reading Yaale V'Yavo. He's not up to it in shemona esrei. (He's nowhere near it.) I said it comes up every Rosh Chodesh, every chag, in bentching and in davening, he may as well get fluent at it. He said it takes him a minute and 30 seconds and he only wants it to take 30 seconds. I said practice it and it will take 30 seconds. It seems awful to him. He whines. (I'm glad he's not in school and this is not a daily, hourly battle.)

He's been having trouble with davening in general. It recently got to the point where he's been skipping breakfast. Because you can't eat before davening. And then he davens right before chatzos.

I've come to understand from Chen that tasks that seem to be not so difficult yet are procrastinated is a feature of ADHD. This is called "the wall of awful." Here is the video that explains it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo08uS904Rg

This whole video was pretty eye opening for me. Especially as I'm the type of person who doesn't have much trouble pushing myself to do things I don't especially feel like doing. It's a feature of ADHD that they have a much harder time "forcing" or "making" themselves do things they find distasteful. I know many people think, "I also don't like doing things I don't want to do. But I do it!" But it seems to me that there is significant neurodivergence here. E would actually develop tics, anxiety, and mutilate himself (in the event that he actually can even manage to do it).

So basically, he's spending the whole morning gearing up to daven. It takes him that long.

I asked a friend of mine if he thought E should be allowed to have breakfast and not skip it. Or would that make E feel like the mitzvos are too bendable. He said that's a question for a posek. I was trying to decide which posek to consult. One who has an understanding of the emotional elements of ADHD.

I consulted Chen, who suggested that he say birchas haTorah and then have a quick bowl of cereal. So he does some form of praise/request/thanks even if it's not the official one.

I sat down with E this morning and spoke to him about the Wall of Awful and how it's something he's dreading every day. I asked if eating breakfast would help and he said that he doesn't want to do that, since breakfast is the thing that motivates him to daven--so that he can eat. And if we remove that, he has no motivation. He doesn't want to do it and he only does it because of the chiyuv and he can only bring himself to do it if he's waiting to eat breakfast.

I suggested maybe he wants to move tefilin to mincha time instead. He said no, then it's hanging over his head for longer and the Wall of Awful is there for longer.

So we are trying to strategize and it's still challenging. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, I'm all ears.

 

the baby and toddler years

I was slicing mushrooms this afternoon to put into a braised meat with sauteed mushrooms and wine sauce for shabbos.  I remembered the years when I bought sliced mushrooms, because I had no time to slice mushrooms.  I wanted salad but I had no time to make salad (or was too exhausted) and cutting romaine lettuce (let alone additional vegetables) was beyond me.  I drank hot chocolate instead of cappuccino because it takes me six minutes to make a cappuccino and I never had 6 consecutive minutes.  Hot chocolate was 2 minutes in the microwave.  One time I decided to make meatballs (not sure what I was thinking) and had my hands deep in chopped meat when the baby needed to be fed.  Now what?  (I've been since advised--rubber gloves.)

Now slicing mushrooms is a luxury.  Making a cappuccino is a luxury.  Sitting and catching my breath is a luxury. 

Homeschooling without babies and toddlers is very different than homeschooling with babies and toddlers.  Most years kind of sink into the abyss of no sleep and intense childcare.  My experienced homeschooler friend told me that you lose a year of homeschooling every time you have a baby.  But it seemed to me I lost at least a partial year being pregnant (being so nauseous I lay on the couch for 4 months) (and in my case, having a lot of miscarriages and bedrest--though homeschooling while on bedrest was actually not too bad.  Feeding them was impossible.  But getting them to drag their books over to the bed and learn?  Utterly manageable), and then the sleepless year of baby.  And what about those families who have babies year after year?  Then some of the children grow up and if every year was a lost year, did they get educated?

In secular homeschool circles, they don't talk much about this.  I've found the Christian homeschoolers have similar issues.  A lot of those years were a blur for me.

Nothing to do with post. They made these from clay and love to play with them. Figured I'd stick them here so I can look back on this one day and remember how much they loved playing with toys they made with their own efforts.

down on myself

This is the kind of rut I don't like to spend a lot of mental energy on, and maybe writing about it sinks me further into it.  But I figure a lot of people experience this so I may as well put it out there.

Right now Chana is lying on the couch under a giant cardboard box.  It's a box that has been converted into a car/rocketship, complete with giant window.  The boys have been using it all week.  Right now it's a fort for sulking.

I haven't been so happy with how rashi has been going.  I've been, b'dieved (not optimally), being okay with her being fairly fluent at reading it with the majority of the words pronounced correctly or close to correctly, and knowing the general idea of the rashi.  This is not my preference, since I'd rather she know how to translate it phrase by phrase, and that she would learn the new words.  But it's too much.  I had to choose to do more rashis like this, or to do fewer rashis and concentrate on better translation.  I chose the former, since it has the added bonus of bekius (knowing a larger amount of information).  It has the negative of not working so well to improve rashi skills.

Somehow, today, there are 16 new rashis to do.  Chana is completely overwhelmed.  We must have gone a few days where we didn't do new rashis.  Chana gets annoyed if I scout out new rashis while she is doing new pesukim, and so I try to do it after she's finished.  But that smacks too much of "prep" which I dislike.  So I guess I finally sat down and underlined a bunch of rashis yesterday, and there were a lot of them.

***
I had to interrupt writing this because my 2yo, Aharon, is having an on-the-floor-kicking-and-screaming tantrum about an egg.  He wanted a hard boiled egg.  I have none.  He took one from the fridge.  I decided to let him crack it because he thought my refusal to let him crack it was a conspiracy to prevent him from having the hard boiled egg.  He cracked it, and then was dismayed that it wouldn't peel.  Then he got another egg to try again, and freaked out when I took it away.  Then he got upset that the eggs I was boiling weren't ready.  Then he was upset that they were going to be hot.  Then he refused the sunny-side-up egg I made with his cracked egg.  Then he screamed when I ate it.

And the whole time I'm still thinking about Chana being overwhelmed with rashi and wishing I could figure out how to reconnect with her.
***
Aside from rashi not working out so well, Chana's been complaining about how she dislikes math (even though it's going great) and one day last week, she and Sarah were saying how much they disliked Chumash.  Sarah has unfond memories of Chumash.

I've been feeling morose about that.  Why is it that the two subjects I teach them are the ones they dislike intensely?  Is it me?  Is it the way I teach?

It's possible that they just dislike anything where they have to do drillwork.  And yet I know there are teachers who impart skills and the students do enjoy it.

Add into the mix that it seems like my 2 and 4 year old have been tantrumming a lot.  And yelling at me and hitting me.  Or maybe they've been their usual, but I've been edgier.  I have been hearing myself speak in ways that I would find embarrassing if I were to be overheard.  And then I note that I'm concerned with image, but less concerned with the emotional damage I'll wreak.  Am I experiencing burnout?  Am I allowing their behaviors and reacting in a way that encourages it?  I've been out, by myself and on date nights, and it hasn't been helping.  (I've been more mindful of my reactions to the tantrums, and that has been helping.)  So between it being a somewhat more intense toddler phase these days, plus me feeling overall like my girls dislike learning the areas I put the most effort into, I've been down on myself.

It occurs to me that during the early teenage years, I don't speak that much to my daughters (it minimizes arguing), and when I do, it is schoolwork related, and so a lot of our learning interactions are laced with the undertones of adolescent mother daughter conflict.  Is that why they have unhappy memories of our work together?  It saddens me because studying Torah with my daughters has been one of the happiest and most rewarding experiences of my life.

Maybe they got more out of it than they feel they got.  Maybe they have an underlying feeling of dislike of slogging through the skillswork, but maybe they also have an overall sense of Torah that they don't even realize, because it's so much a part of them.

It's hard to not be down on myself and not question and not wonder if I've been going about this wrong.

But I take a deep breath.  Sarah's a wonderful young lady.  I hope, and there is every reason to believe, that Chana and I will emerge from the tumult of these years.

It is possible that I'm teaching Torah in a way that causes them to dislike it.  I'm already trying a different approach with the boys, anyway.  So maybe I made mistakes.  Maybe I bungled it somewhat.

I'm going to take my usual approach.  Cut myself a break.  Let these thoughts simmer.  If I think I made mistakes that I have an opportunity to do better with in the future, then I'll try to do better.  If it's in the past, so be it.

Back to the practical.  I've got a list of 16 rashis and a daughter who's not talking to me.  My priority is to have a pleasant interaction of some sort with her, and that is trickier than doing those rashis.

against unschooling judaics

today was one of those days that makes me think that unschooling is not the answer.  we spent a week by my parents and chana asked if she could have a vacation from chumash (according to unschooling philosophy, if the child needs a "vacation" then we're approaching it wrong..).  i acceded. 

so today we got back into it.  i asked her if she wanted to do it now or later.  she chose now and finished up what she was doing.  she chose to chazer shlishi (i let her choose which aliya), and did it herself, asking for 2 words.  then we went over the beginning of revii together.  (she started doing it herself, but soon needed me to sit next to her and provide word translation and also general phrase translation.)  after barely remembering the new pesukim from last time (probably because it had been so long since we did them and she didn't have any review of them at all soon after she learned them) and the new pasuk being complicated, i told her to just do those 2 pesukim again and we wouldn't do any more.  2 pesukim (or really just one new one) is rather sparse compared to how much she usually covers. 

one thing i have to watch out for is that if she gets too emotionally overloaded during pshat, she doesn't have mental energy left for rashi.  and we've been doing a LOT of rashi. 

so even before we started she was getting whelmed.  (i was going to say overwhelmed, but i must admit that she's come a long way in mastering herself, and while she was whelmed, she wasn't overwhelmed.)

i said, coaxingly, "just do as much as you can do."  and she insightfully said, "that means just keep going til i finish it all!" i laughed because that's true, and that lightened the atmosphere.

so she was doing rashi, but complaining about it, but doing a really great job.  she was kvetching, but she was right at that point in education where i could see she was stretching, but not being pushed too hard.  exactly what good education is supposed to be.  exactly what is emotionally satisfying for the child. 

it turned out, about halfway through (i can't remember how long--probably about 20 min of intense reading and translating where she can usually do 40+ min), i judged that she really was hitting an emotional limit.  so we stopped, and either we'll pick it up tonight if it's quiet (hahahahahaha though a girl can dream) or tomorrow.

i feel like she's really making great strides in skills. 

i think about how all the rest of our lives is seamless, pleasant and relaxed (and chumash is, too) but she dislikes chumash and wishes she didn't have to do it, and i wonder if unschooling would provide that joy towards learning.  but i also love the day in day out learning and the gaining of skills and knowledge. 

this is why, even though i love unschooling and it calls me, i also do not feel compelled to promote it.  for parents who like structure and for kids who respond to it, structured schooling that still pays attention to the individuality of the child (and most homeschoolers, no matter how structured, do come to that, because the individualized attention demands it) is wonderful.

then again, the older i get, the less i feel compelled to promote anything.  you do what you want and i'll do what i want.  just don't kill me or legislate against me.  and we shall reap the consequences of our choices.  but i digress.  i just wanted to say that when you can hit that "sweet spot" in structure, where the child is being stretched but not painfully, structured education is a glory to behold.

i interrupted chana's intense comic book writing/illustrating to do chumash. i warned her a few hours in advance, and waited for a pause where she was showing a particularly comical scene to everyone.

introduced nif'al today (passive). vayechulu. a bit tricky because she is not so familiar with the normal nekudos that she can easily recognize different nekudos (eg vayomer and vaye'amer). but we had a lot of fun saying things actively and passively. chana ate... chana was eaten. chana carried... chana was carried (with pantomiming the actions, of course).

last time, she had looked up and written down 2 new words. i knew that having her find those words in her notebook would burn her out before she even started translating. apparently, reading it, finding the shoresh, finding that letter in her notebook in the proper aleph beis order, looking for it on the page, and reading it, is a real killjoy. so i just refreshed her memory that the words meant "finished" and "army." she then translated smoothly and quickly, and all was happy.

and now she's illustrating again.