Learning Together

My daughter starts kindergarten next week. She’s head to a public school. I would like my wife to be open to us homeschooling her. Today, I became aware of an emotional barrier to that goal: the legacy of wife’s family.

My wife’s family came to America in the late 18th Century and has been on this land ever since. This is a tremendous blessing. I don’t take it for granted. I love my in-laws.

As far as school goes, however, my father-in-law made clear to me what that legacy entails as he talked to my daughter about her kindergarten career.

“Lot of smart people have gone there,” he said. “Your mama. Me. Your great-grandmother. Your great-great grandmother.”

There it was. Four generations have gone to this elementary school. My daughter and her two cousins are the fifth.

That means something. Attending the school is a tradition. My father-in-law brought it up as a warning. “We’ll be watching how you do.” I took it another way. “This is what we do.”

It just means that if we decide to homeschool our daughter, we will need more than logic. To paraphrase Obi-Wan, the emotional force in this one is strong in this one.

Consider myself warned.

My daughter and I are on the road visiting my parents. We forgot her favorite bear, and we had a crisis at bedtime last night.

“I can’t sleep without Almondine!” she cried.

“You can do it!” I encouraged her.

It was a battle between a FIXED and GROWTH mindset.

Of course, she slept well (and slept in! 9am!).

This morning, I told her proud I was of her. Throughout the day, I tried to remind myself about this small victory, a moment where she was able to do something she didn’t think she was able to do.

“Remember this!” I told her.

With her school career starting in less than a week, I know I will.

Today, I drove my daughter to my parents. We spent time about three hours of daddy/daughter time in the car and in my parents’ pool. As she is wont, my daughter talked a lot.

Today, I struck by her questions.

Me (in the car): “We’re going to listen to this lecture on literature for awhile.”

Her: “What’s a lecture?”

Continue reading “Conversations”

My daughter attended a day-long VBS extravaganza which let my wife and I grab some lunch and conversation time. As we feasted on some delicious barbecue, my wife asked me if I was excited about our daughter attending kindergarten.

It gave me a chance to articulate the basic premise behind this site.

I feel responsible for our daughter’s education, but I know I’m not perfect and that I can’t direct her learning alone. This week has demonstrated that. Consequently, I’m looking forward to seeing the ways that our daughter responds to school and what she’ll actually be taught. I want to see how others respond to her and how she responds to them.

I’m most excited about the fact that because of writing this blog, I’ve been more aware of what my daughter is learning (or not learning) every day. I’m excited about recording her growth and reflecting on what I can do to make sure that glorifying God and enjoying Him forever.

It was a great conversation. It let me know where my wife currently stands with homeschooling (against it, but with an awareness that her resistance contains an emotional response), and it let me know that this kind of daily record is worth keeping.

My daughter is a perfectionist. My daughter is impatient. She wants things done exactly the way she wants them done, and she wants them done yesterday. This is a flammable combination.

Since reading Carol Dweck’s landmark book Mindset, I’ve become more away of how my daughter uses “fixed mindset” language. She says she will “never” get better at something. She’s “not good” at some skill. She’s “terrible.” Things are “awful.” It’s unrelenting.

I’m not certain where my daughter gets it. I don’t talk that way, and, in general, I try to admit when I’m wrong and or don’t get something right and try again.

But here’s my five-year-old daughter with massive expectations for herself (and for us too, btw) expecting perfection the first time around. It’s not good. I see it with her art (piano and drawing) and with lots of other things too (sports, for instance).

I have tried to internalize Dweck’s advice not to complement identity traits about my daughter. I praise her effort, not her intelligence. I take care to compliment when she works through an error and perseveres.

But I have not actively prayed about this problem, and I’m sure there are ways that I am subtly encouraging my daughter to be so absolutist about her skills. She could be fishing for compliments. She could authentically mean what she’s saying. I’m not sure, but I know I don’t want her pronouncing those kind of fixed statements about who she is and what she can do at the age of five.

I will be monitoring this.

This week, I’m feeling more acutely the tension between my direction and my daughter’s passion. For instance, at the same time that I’ve gotten her to practice specific songs on the piano, it seems like her own desire to fool around on the piano has gone down.

But this morning, she told me she had written a song: “This Is Where I’m Meant To Be.”

So before we began her practice session, I asked her to play the song on the piano. She noodled and warbled and came up with something that sounded vaguely Disney-ish. It was fun. It was weird.

Then I asked her to practice the songs we learned together: “Twinkle Twinkle,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” AND “Jesus Loves Me.” She readily complied.

My takeaways?

1. She obviously loves music if she’s writing songs on her own.
2. Better to let her play the stuff she wants to play first, then ask for her to put in the practice time on things I want her to do.

I have taken my daughter to the local children’s museum thirty or forty times over the past two years. I have only taken her twice since COVID hit. Today was the second time.

Here’s how I know writing this blog will be good for me: I realized how haphazard my aims are regarding this time with my daughter. It takes 30 minutes to get there from our house. What do we do on the way? Talk? Listen to music? Listen to a book I want to listen to? Sit in silence? Good questions. Today, we opted for a lot of instrumental music. “Did you like it?” I would ask. “It was different,” she might respond, or “Those guys were good!” after a particularly energetic piece.

Once we reach the museum, I generally let her dictate what we do. I obviously have control of the clock, and I have in my mind how long we can stay.

Continue reading “The Children’s Museum”

My wife had a great idea for a family outing today. My daughter and I would go to the dollar movies while my wife shopped. We’d get back together and grab some pizza for lunch.

We had two movies to choose from: The Lego Movie 2 or Minions: The Rise of Groo. My initial inclination was that The Lego Movie 2 would be better. The Minions movie, of course, is about henchmen looking for the right evil boss for them. But I talked myself into the movie for a simple reason: time. The Lego Movie 2 was twenty minutes longer, and since both started at 11am, I didn’t want our daughter waiting for lunch until 1pm.

The movie was silly and featured lots of slapstick humor. My daughter was transfixed, and except for a few scenes where she was scared for the Minions, she enjoyed the experience. We ate buttery popcorn, sat in a cool theater on a hot, humid day, and had a chance to laugh.

Continue reading “Minions at the Movies”