Well, working from home has its benefits and pitfalls. One pitfall is the noise in a small place. We all are home due to the Coronavirus quarantine, and that means Daddy does his job from the cave office in the condo. The other day, Tatum made a bit too much noise during her schooling. Recess has to be inside sometimes, and also, she can get a bit riled up.
She felt so bad, and gave him this note under the door.
He felt like a million dollars after and showed us his strong muscles.
Oh pitter patter!
(I’m sure he loves that this is going in the blog). She later made him a card for Easter.
May of 2018, Tatum started receiving allowance. We started with $5/week when she was 5. She divided it up into GIVE, SAVE, SPEND.
Well, now she is 7, and we decided it was time to open a child savings account. The Hay fam headed over to Bank of America for our appointment. We met with a guy named Nick, and he and Tatum hit it off. She talked his ear off. Apparently, he has an 8-year old sister, so he had no problem chatting away with her.
She brought in her SAVE envelope. (with Dino of course)
She puts in about $1/week, so how much do you think she has saved up?
That’s right: She’s saved $63 + $16 in $2 (which we did not deposit) + $50 from Doug’s mom from Christmas. Altogether: $113.
So exciting! Let’s continue to be diligent in our saving, Tatum. So proud of your efforts.
Tatum helped Daddy put up some blinds the other night. We have been home A.L.O.T due to the Coronavirus quarantine. The windows were filthy, and Tot agreed to clean them.
What’s a mommy to do? You see your child get so frustrated because she just can’t seem to master her subtraction math facts fast enough. The timed tests stymie her, and she feels like she “can’t” do it.
I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THIS.
I tell her: Practice, Practice, Practice. This is what we need to do.
Last week, I made a fun chart for her to complete in 5 days. 4 x/day practice, and let’s see how you do after this.
Well, we are going to do this again next week, but you can see she had some perfect practices! I also look at attitude.
I needed to come up with a prize incentive, and I decided on a treasure box. I filled the treasure box with gifts. The gifts have a point value on them. This way, she can collect “tickets” and “purchase” a gift with her tickets. She learns math this way too! (there’s always a method to my madness).
These tickets were created:
You can see that the blank has to be filled in with WHAT she did well; this way she can see the specific thing she did well. As you can see, she received two tickets, and ONE was just for attitude. I value this above the work!
Here is the treasure box:
She earned 10 points, and that was enough to purchase some mechanical pencils!
She WANTS the other gifts, so guess what she did all night and today? She’s been practicing and practicing!! She got her math facts page down from 10 minutes to …..wait for it……
FIVE MINUTES!!! She cut it in 1/2 in 2 days.
Let’s see how she does next week. She is having FUN with math now. Yah!!!
Frustration. It produces all kinds of reactions. For example, Tatum has been trying to master her math facts so she can get 100% on a 6 minute assessment. She can do the sheet in 7.5 minutes, practicing and then with the actual test, it’s more like 10 minutes.
She runs into her room crying and telling me she’s “stupid.” UGH. Then, there’s some impulsive reactions with words she doesn’t mean, but they come out. All completely unavoidable with a some self-control and some grace for herself. She is so hard on herself (sounds familiar).
Sometimes, also, I have an opinion of how she should be doing something, and she doesn’t quite agree. This reaction can come out in an ugly way as well.
BUT WITH ALL OF THIS > one thing my daughter possesses is a strong repentant heart. She immediately has immense guilt, and makes things right. It’s a stellar quality how she wants to fix things right away. She doesn’t let things fester or get worse. This could also be that I don’t respond in kind.
First, I don’t allow her to say things about herself that are lies from the PIT. I make her repeat these words: “I am a CHILD of GOD; I am wonderfully made.” Maybe she makes a stupid choice but I will not allow her to say this about herself. Also, I don’t yell back or be angry with her (Oh, sure, I have slipped, but I don’t respond back this way for the most part). SO, it doesn’t escalate.
She loves to make a little note and put it on the counter before we talk.
This is an endearing quality of Tatum. As I always say, “How you respond is more important that the circumstance itself.” Let’s try to STOP, THINK, and PRAY more often to minimize regret.
