Monday, November 21, 2005

Attitudes

It has really hit home to me lately how much this homeschool experience depends on me and my attitudes. If I am enthusiastic and energetic we have a good school day. If I am cranky or distracted, or otherwise out of sorts, you can count on very little getting done, school-wise. It is like Superboy is a mirror of my own attitudes from day to day. I recently hurt my back right in the middle of the most rockin' school week we've ever had. My attitude plummeted and so did Superboy's right along with it. Now, maybe it shouldn't be this way, and maybe my kiddos should be more self-motivated, but in our reality, this is how it works.
Sometimes this is frustrating, but I guess I need to just accept that this is where we are, at least for now.
It reminds me of the writing stage that we are in. In Julie Bogart's book "The Writer's Jungle" she describes a stage of writing called the "partnership" writing stage. In this stage the child needs alot of support, not being quite ready to branch out on his own, yet. The goal is to build confidence in order to reach the stage called "Faltering Ownership" in which the child takes more responsibility for the writing product. Once I realized that Superboy still needed to be in the partnership writing phase, our entire writing experience became much more positive. Superboy truly enjoys writing now and his confidence grows in leaps and bounds. It is about time to move into faltering ownership and we are naturally making that transition as he is ready.
I think we are also in the "Partnership" stage of motivation in general as well. Hopefully, soon we can move into "faltering ownership" so that Superboy can have more of his very own good and bad days, regardless of what Mom is feeling.
Lets hope they are mostly good.

3 comments:

barbara said...

Theresa,

Josh and I are right there with you and Superboy. As he gets older though, he has begun to take ownership for more things, especially things that are initiated by him such as his birding.He just did this recently. He was at the bookstore with his oldest sister and myself. She is very intellectual and had chosen to buy a copy of William Faulkner's stories as she just read one for a literature class and was intrigued. Josh had picked up a copy of Robin Hood (an unedited version). He is having a great time with this book even though it took him awhile to get used to the language. Now, if I had suggested this -I have in fact done this very thing :) - he would probably have been very resistent as he was in the past. This time, his idea, his ownership, his pleasure. The key for me is patience, not one of my better virtues unfortunately. and a trusting of him. Superboy is a great kid and will come into his own when the timing is right. The old saying, God's timing, not ours. Boy is this a hard one for me to remember sometimes in this journey.

Theresa said...

Thanks for the support and encouragement. I need to remember about God's timing. Every time I try to push it, it never works, anyway!
BTW did Josh get his letter? The answer to the riddle is in a post titled "and we're off" from a few days back.

barbara said...

Josh got his letter and proceeded to show it around to everyone with a huge smile. He wanted all the family members to see a picture of his pen pal friend lol. He has a return letter to send off today to Superboy. We'll have to check your post for the riddle. We think we have an answer. :)