"I can't wait to move up to the 4's class so I can get homework! Grandma calls it homefun! It's going to be perfect!"
"Perfect." But that's precisely the problem I have with this homework. Perfectionism.
Laura comes home every night with her intimidating black composition book with assignments glued in. Practice these letters. Color in this picture. Draw these shapes to match. It's not the actual assignments - it's the expectation Laura has for herself to be perfect.
Practice these letters: She's lefty, which means that our right-handed system of letter writing is not intuitive for her. Many of her letters come out perfectly written... completely backwards. And as soon as Laura compares her letter to the example, she bursts into tears. "It's not perfect! It needs to be perfect! My teacher will be upset!"
Woah. WAIT A MINUTE. You are four years old. You still fit on my lap, and snuggle blankies to sleep, and need me to cut up your food at dinner. You are still so little and young and innocent. Please, PLEASE don't worry about what a teacher thinks of you.
I am frustrated, and maybe I need to speak with her teacher about this, but I am frustrated because it feels like Laura is feeling pressured to learn and do things a certain way. Maybe the pressure she is feeling is all internal. But if there is a teacher - or even a classmate - making her feel this way, she needs it to stop. She'll learn to write her letters. I'm quite sure of that. I just don't need her feeling intimidated into learning.
As Laura said just last night, "Mom, this homework really isn't fun. I thought it was supposed to be fun." So I wrote as much in a little note in her composition book last night:
Laura did not finish writing her P's because she was getting too upset when they weren't "perfect" and I asked her to stop. -C
