Today the girls came home from school and in the usual style, they get snack and then its right into homework stopping only for bathroom breaks. So Gillian gets right to it and it takes her a little while but nonetheless, she is now complete. Naudia on the other hand.....this is where I am having difficulty. Forgive me, but she is such a scatterbrain. She and Gillian sit down at the same time with the same homework and logically, they should be finishing up at roughly the same time (give or take a few). Not the case today. Naudia decided that homework wasn't as important as writing a letter to her penpal. This letter of course, is not homework and she insisted on making it as artsy as possible. This is not inherently bad, I encourage them writing letters. The issue is that she chose to not do her homework. So now I become the bad guy. I get mad that she hasn't even begun it (oh, its 5:30pm at this point, they've been home for an hour and a half and Gillian is finished) So I tell her to go get her homework and get started. I try to be private about this since I firmly believe that by calling out her mistakes in front of her sister, Naudia gets a sort of inferiority complex. I do not want that at all! I want both girls to be confident and independent.
So she (Naudia) goes over to her back pack, gets out her folder and proceeds to want to give me ALL THE PAPERS ONE AT A TIME. I finally tell her that she just needs to get to work. She takes her homework over to the desk, turns around and hands me a stack of papers. I start to go through them, look up and see that she is turned around facing me and watching me read the papers! GRR. So I frustratingly tell her to turn around and get started on her work!
I feel like such a bad guy when it comes to Naudia and her scatterbrained-ness. Gillian can be stubborn but she usually gets it and that is that. With Naudia, it just seems that she just doesn't get it and won't ask but then looks like a deer in headlights when you finally get so frustrated with her to the point where I am yelling at her to do the simplest of tasks.
I really need to find some patience for my daughter. She is smart and funny and talented and so self conscious. Gillian is, in many ways, her opposite. Overly confident to the point of being obstinate. I really don't know how to help Naudia build her confidence when her biggest rival looks just like her, in the same grade, competes for the same attention from the same parents and lives in the same house and sleeps in the same room as her.
Well, I have company and I need to get dinner on the table so I will write more soon.
OKTHXBI
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1 comment:
Take a deep breath and let it out. I'm not a mother, but I do work with Kyle. Naudia just needs reminders to stay on task. When I watched her the other night, they both had reading homework to do. I asked them to pick out books to read and take them with them. Later that evening when it was time for them to finally sit down, Gillian had already pretty much read hers, but I had her read it again and so that Naudia didn't feel like she was alone in the matter. Naudia would get distracted because Gillian finished before her, but just a reminder every time I saw her eyes begin to wander that the sooner she finished her book, the sooner she could do something else. In that case, watch a movie, but then I hadn't looked at the clock and it was time to take them back to you, but they were fine. She did fine with the little reminders.
It can get frustrating, I know, but remember to breathe. Remember zazen. You can do it standing and in the middle of something. Same basics. Breathe in, breathe out, and let go. :D
A little bit of patience goes a long way, especially with Kyle.
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