and some freudian analysis

i pushed chana pretty hard this morning because i was taking the boys to see oma and til i got downstairs at 10, we only had 1 hour until we were leaving. so i wanted to do rashi first but chana wanted to do new pesukim first but i said we had to start from the beginning of shlishi. chana fought it but i was pretty recalcitrant. i didn't argue, i just insisted. she wasn't happy but she did it. then i gave her a 10 minute break and then we did rashi. i was working her pretty hard and i was in an interesting place this morning where i didn't get too involved emotionally. like i just had it in my head that we were going to cover all of shlishi and the 7 or so rashis in the hour and that's that. so she complained and muttered and sometimes whined and cried, but it was like i was a physical trainer and she was crying out with being pushed to the limit but i could tell i wasn't pushing her past her endurance. i don't know if it was because of my state of mind or if it was because of her state of mind. or a combo.

chana asked why did they say "recognize the coat of your son" vs "our brother."

at one point, she was dramatically saying that she would not or could not do a rashi. i just kept pointing to it and saying, "go." she said, "well, that's supportive." which i thought was amusing. then she asked why i laughed. she says things like a punch line and i laugh, and she asks why i think she's funny even though i know she's kind of trying to solicit the laugh.

so she was pretty annoyed at the amount of rashis. and she hit the phrase "talmud lomar." we have seen that a few times, and i've tried to teach her the definition is "this is to teach us" but it hasn't been sticking. so i have been having her do it via shoresh, and she translates it as "learn in order to say" which is close enough. so every time she hits the word "talmud" i've been having her find the shoresh if she doesn't know it. i've mentioned before that she really doesn't have an intuition for finding the shoresh like sarah did. so we practice it. which she dislikes, but i think she is coming to see it is useful and that she can know what words mean more easily if she identifies the shoresh. so she got stuck on "talmud" and i asked her for the shoresh. "talam" nope. so i pointed with my finger to the "l'mud" part.

so she said "lamud." then she said, "lamut." to die.

then she said it was "lamad" to learn. after she finished the rashi, she said, "why did i say 'lamut?''"

and i said, "because you want me to die." (she was pretty angry about the rashi, and on top of that, dissecting the shoresh). as usual, she was a little uncomfortable with the thought of her aggression against me. so i said what i always do: "you want me to die this much" (and i put my thumb and pointer together to signify just a little bit) "and overall, it wouldn't feel good if i died, because you love me and you would miss me. but if i died you wouldn't have to do these rashis or this much chumash."

then she got on the bandwagon and said, "yeah, and i could do what i want all the time. i could play on the computer and not do any chumash." pause. "unless daddy would make me do chumash, too." pause. "but i would be able to play on the computer and not do rashi." smile. "ok, next rashi."

rosh hashana

we reviewed sheni of vayetze. then shlishi the ones she did yesterday. then i wanted to do new pesukim. chana was arguing with me about how many (i ventured maybe 7) and i said i will put the timer on for 15 minutes. she began to argue that this is too much. i said it seems to me that 15 minutes is not too much for anything (though now that i'm thinking about it, perhaps 15 min of straight contractions or 15 min of bleeding copiously can be too much). and she said, i'm not used to that much. and i said, really, 15 minutes is not a large amount of time.

anyway, sach hakol she did 17 pesukim. after 7, she said she should have just done 7 pesukim. at that point we had over 8 or 9 minutes left and i reiterated that 15 min of chumash was not unreasonable.

most of the words were pretty simple. she got annoyed at me when i asked her to not just translate but to make sense of the pesukim. and she got annoyed at me when i asked her to translate the shoresh of the names of leah. she said, why do i have to? and i said, coz it's cool.
but i guess it's not that cool if i'm "forcing" her.

btw, her shoresh ability is improving. when she reviewed sheni, when she didn't know the word she was able to break down the shoresh and look at surrounding words to give her clues. it was nice.

now she's having a 20 min break before rashi. frankly, i would like a longer break. i may do that. i doubt she'll complain. i have to figure out which rashis to do.

on a rosh hashana note, i was thinking what i want for each of my children, and what i want in terms of my relationship with each one. ie where are my challenges and where do i need divine help. with chana, thankfully we are in a fairly amenable phase and not having too much conflict. i realized what i would like is for her to love and enjoy learning torah.

and that got me thinking about how this skill work is not so conducive to love of torah. or at least the way i'm doing it is not. as you know, i always go back and forth over this issue. do we push skills and figure it will not affect the love of learning, as long as learning is enjoyable in other venues (in which case i must make an effort to provide some of those other venues). or does every little drop affect the overall attitude? i guess these days i lean towards the first one.

i also was thinking about how what we daven for is both based on and also affects the future of our assessment of the situation. i assess my relationship with chana. i ask for things based on that understanding. and that act of standing before hashem and asking for that particular thing affects how i act in the future.

we are swimming in vocabulary

it took us a while to sit down to do chumash today. well, it took me a while. chana rarely jumps up with glee to do chumash, and when she would say, "not now," and i would say, "ok," that's not a way to get it done. but we finally sat down after a brief tussle over who got the blanket (that's her and elazar, not me).

and we made it through 4 pesukim with a decent number of new words, plus a pretty thorough review of the words from yesterday. i don't feel like there is a full handle of some of the main words in noach (maybe i'll orally review them in a bit) and here we are, piling on new words. i'm going to count how many we have to review in 9 pesukim which is 2 days of work.

20 words from yesterday (many of which she is familiar with but needs review, like ishto, her old nemesis). and 8 from today, give or take. it's tough to go forward when i really want to get these down.

we haven't done rashi in a while.

the screaming was there, but not as bad as it's been, considering chana's dislike for not instantly remembering things. she still refuses to use the white board to identify shorashim. considering that bana in "vayiven" is missing the "hey" and nasa in "vayisa" is missing the "nun" and considering she yells about not knowing it, i feel like insisting but that is a whole 'nother battle. it disturbs her that the nekudos are not universal. i tried to explain to her that the nekudos are not essential; she just has to learn to identify which are the shoresh letters and that's the clue to the word. but that drives her nuts. interesting because i think sarah picked up that concept and its application pretty painlessly. every kid is different. sarah also never minded writing down the shoresh on the white board.