more whining about rashi

i'll leave it for you to decide who the subject of the title of this blog post is, me or chana :-P

we've been briskly moving along these last couple of weeks, with chana doing her chazara and new pesukim and rashis.  a few days we had to slow down because the pesukim were complicated, but then we hit a batch of simple ones.  so it's been business as usual and with very little input from me, so there wasn't anything to write.  chana's actually been deciding on her own to pick it up, so it hasn't even been on my head.  i hadn't even thought about chumash and she decides to do it (except today she has a friend over.  so i guess we'll do it this evening). 

then we blasted through that whole bunch of pesukim, and i picked a pen up and underlined a bunch of rashis.  i haven't counted them, but chana said it was 24 rashis.  i don't know if that includes the ones she is in the middle of doing already.  last night she went crazy about the amount.

she asked the usual questions: WHY? why do i need to do rashi?
you already told me i'm so good at it.  why do i have to do more?
why do i have to do so many?
i feel like you are doing this because you hate me! (ok, that's not a question)
why do i have to do this? i hate rashi and i hate chumash!

since none of these rashis were particularly complicated, but clearly all of them together were overwhelming, i began to question myself.  am i making her do too much?  is this going to make her hate chumash and rashi forever? 

i'm happy to say that i am finally an experienced homeschooler.  this has happened before, many times.  i've asked the questions and had these doubts and fears, many times. 

i think the answer is:

maybe.

maybe i am pushing too hard.  maybe it is too much.  but maybe it's fine.  maybe pushing is what she needs. 

maybe i'm making a mistake.  maybe not doing it would be a mistake.

i have to just trust that this is a long term endeavor, and there is a lot of feedback (meaning if your child is complaining miserably, at length, over and over, you really ought to rethink how you're doing it).  nothing is written in stone.  you can always backtrack and try something new.  maybe you will do it wrong.  maybe you are doing it wrong.  odds are, you are trying harder and care more than anyone else in the world, because it's your child.  maybe you are pushing too hard or not enough.  what are the chances of getting everything just right?  do your best, be willing to be wrong, and trust in the longevity and freedom of homeschooling.

as far as practical, i think i may be erring on pushing chana too hard.  with sarah i erred on pushing her not enough.  there are and will be effects both ways.

i do, find, though, that if i continue to push chana too hard, the conflict lets me know that it's not a good idea.  a little discomfort and a little unwillingness i understand.  feeling like she's being tortured constantly is probably not beneficial.  (though that scene from the original karate kid comes to mind--where he's being put to work and put to work pointlessly and fruitlessly and frustratingly, until the epic moment when it all clicks and he understands the purpose and he has skills.)

we'll see how it goes today.

it happens to all of us. i think.

i only post this to show how very infuriated and frustrated a homeschool mom can sometimes get.  i am not proud of how i behaved.

at 11:50 i asked chana to do chumash.  she asked for 10 minutes.  somehow, i'm not sure how, it was 12:55 and it seemed to me that for the past 45 min at least, i had been asking her to do chumash and she had always had some reason why not.  i was getting shorter and shorter tempered.  she was playing some game, she asked if she could finish, i said ok.  then 10 minutes later i asked to do chumash, she said she's still playing.  finally i said i don't care if you are still playing, when you asked if you could finish, how many minutes are we talking?  i thought it would be about 2 min and it's a lot more.  she said she didn't know and i got annoyed.  then she had to shut down her computer, which took a long time because, in her words, it's a dinosaur (as if there were computers in the dinosaur era). then something else.  then something else. THEN she asked if she could wash her hands and i said, and i cannot believe i said this, "i'm going to kill you in a minute."

now, this is not part of my parenting repertoire.  except when it is, apparently.  i cannot recall telling any of my children that i was going to kill them. 

chana, unsurprisingly, burst into tears. 

my temper has been rather fraying this last week.  elazar's in a tough, super energetic phase, after being fairly amenable for 6 months or more.  i have to readjust.  jack is teething and spends a lot of the day screaming at me.  aharon is ok, but is still under a year and baby care is fairly intensive.  recently, aharon's dinner and elazar's put-me-to-bed-right-now-or-i'll-start-destroying-the-house-and-hitting-and-breaking-things is basically at the exact same time, and i haven't had help during bedtime.  well, chana is around and she is great at childcare but not at feeding or discipline.  so 2 extremely immediate needs where putting one aside means intense screaming or things breaking has left me feeling frazzled every night and i've been rather alarmed at how much show of temper i've been both expressing AND feeling.  i haven't been this hair-trigger in a while. 
but it hasn't really spilled over into the day before this. 

last night i really wanted to read an 18 pg story and hear a small lecture on it.  i really wanted to cook for 14 ppl for shabbos.  i really wanted to go for a walk.  i really wanted to visit oma yesterday. 
i skipped navi, which i've been wanting to do but keep putting lower priority.  i wanted to do chumash, which i didn't do during the day because we went to visit oma, and i wanted to do some fractions.  we skipped reading and writing.
something's gotta give.  i do a very very minimal curriculum and sometimes it doesn't fit into our lifestyle. 

anyway, chana and i have been discussing psychological ambivalence for a while, and how she can love me and hate me at the same time.  we've been discussing that she mostly loves me, but a very small part of her sometimes wants me dead. 

one of my favorite examples of this was when she was crying about how much work i was making her do and she said: "i'm crying because i want you to feel bad for me." pause. "and also, i want to poke your eye." pause. "i wonder why your eye..?"

anyway, in an effort to reconnect, i opened up a word document and wrote the following.  (which also led me to ponder that she wouldn't be able to read in hebrew w/o nekudot if i wrote it, which led me to think i've been lax about that)

Chana I don’t know what to do

It is one hour after we said we would start

Now aharon is awake

What should I do when I want to do work ONE HOUR ago

and she wrote:

I HATE U I HATE U U WANTED TO KILL ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!N

and i wrote:

I don’t really want to kill you.  It was a very small feeling.

and then i wrote:

I just feel like this happens a lot.  We don’t have a good solution.  I am ready to do chumash.  You aren’t.  it takes us over an hour to do it.  And then things are too busy.  I am so frustrated.  Please help me think of solutions so that I don’t feel so angry.

 and she wrote:

I cant I feel to hurt

 and i wrote:

I’m sorry that I was so angry that I said that.  I’m sorry I hurt you.  I love you and I would be very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very sad if you were dead.

I learned when I said that to you that I am very frustrated and I would like to find solutions so I don’t get that angry anymore.  Pls help me.

 

and then i wrote:

Possible Solution 1:

You get to say a time (like 12:00) but then if it passes and we haven’t done chumash yet (like it’s 12:07) and I want to do it, you stop what you are doing IMMEDIATELY even in the middle of a game or upload or eating and we do chumash.

 and she didn't like it.  she started to write a solution but didn't like it and deleted it. so i wrote:

Possible solution 2:

You get to say a time (like 12:00) but then if it passes and we haven’t done chumash yet (like it’s 12:07) and I want to do it, you stop what you are doing in 2 or 5 minutes even if you aren’t finished and we do chumash.

 and then i wrote:

And if 2 or 5 minutes pass (and now it’s 12:20) you stop what you are doing IMMEDIATELY even in the middle of a game or upload or eating and we do chumash.

and then we cuddled.  and we did chumash.

Conclusion:

I say I want to do chumash.  Chana chooses a time.  (if we do chumash, then fine.)

But if the time comes.  And goes.  Then I say 2 or 5 minutes. (then if we do chumash, then fine.)

 But if we still haven't done it, then next time I say "let's do chumash" we do it IMMEDIATELY even if in the middle of something.  sign here: Chana mommy

and then chana added a sad smiley face and we agreed to add the words "under duress:"

But if we still haven’t done it, then next time I say “let’s do chumash” we do it IMMEDIATELY even if in the middle of something. Sign here (under duress): Chana :( mommy

hopefully this will help.  we shall see.

ways to encourage people to do things they don't find intrinsically motivating

as per alfie kohn.

1) imagine the way things look to the people doing the work and acknowledge candidly that it may not seem especially interesting.

2) offer a meaningful rationale for doing it anyway, pointing, perhaps, to the long-term benefits it offers or the way it contributes to some larger goal.

(in our house this sounds like: i know you hate it but on the off chance you may someday want to learn torah, i want you to know how to translate it)

3) give the individual as much control as possible over how the work gets done.

(working on that...)