On Patience

Sometimes being a teacher and a mom doesn't coincide as nicely as I would like.

As a teacher, it is very easy for me to be patient and understanding of different learning styles and levels of support.  I do it every day-it comes naturally to me.  As a mom, I completely know that I have a tendency to expect more of my kids.  Perhaps it's because I feel like I know what they are capable of, or perhaps it's because I have high hopes for them to be capable.  Regardless, I know when teaching my own kids, it is easy for me to fall into the trap of losing my patience.  I have worked on this quite a bit over the last several years, and I think I have gotten much better at staying calm and relaxed when teaching my kids.

I got my mommy-feelings hurt the other day when working with Karianna.  Her teacher has asked everyone to do some extra credit to prepare for AIMS testing using a program called acuity, with which I am very familiar.  I logged into the program with Karianna on Monday to see what lessons her teacher had assigned her based on what she needed.  The first math lesson on her screen was functions and equations.

??????

A bit surprising, it was literally algebra.  Karianna is pretty good at math (though she will tell you she hates it), and she actually understood the concepts in the lesson.  The only red flag was a few of her flippant comments, ie, "Just let me do it, mom, I could have done like 4 already".  I couldn't tell if it was because this was way above her level, or if she was just being somewhat belligerent.  So after finishing that first lesson, I pulled up something more relevant that she has already started a bit-long division with no remainders.  She immediately said this would be easy, and I agreed-very much in her realm of understanding.

I was somewhat dismayed 10 minutes later when Karianna had completed the lesson with me successfully, yet she was struggling to not cry, and her voice was quavering the whole time. I did a quick analysis given what I know about myself:  did I get frustrated?  No.  Did I lose my patience? No.  Did I seem to any degree to be displeased with her progress? No.  Just in case I was missing something, I asked Karianna if she felt like I had gotten frustrated with her.  She said no.  Okay--then what is it?  I asked Karianna why she was upset.  Her response was what I assumed:  she said she didn't like it when things were hard for her.  I told her I understood that, and emphasized that's what learning is, and she actually did quite well-there's no need to be sad about letting others help you.  I showed her everything she had gotten right, and praised her.

But still, she was sad, and I obviously wasn't understanding why.  I really thought this was just her not being able to let go of that distaste for conquering new/hard things.  So I thought I might help her really hone in on what she was feeling so we could remedy it.  I said to her, "Okay, think about why you are sad.  Here are 2 multiple choice answers. A:  you are sad because you just don't like working with me on stuff.  And B: you don't like it when things are hard.  What is your answer?"

I wasn't expecting her to say "both".  Feelings=hurt.

Of course, hurt-mom feelings don't ever get to win, they just have to be swallowed up so we moms can help their children before we help ourselves.  I asked Karianna what she meant and she told me she just wanted to be done with this so she could do things she wanted to do and when things were hard it just took up a ton of time and she didn't like spending her time not understanding.  I tried to ignore the fact that she basically just told me she didn't want to spend time with me, and just talked her through things.  The conversation ended well for Karianna, but I was pretty listless the rest of the day.

It's hard to figure out what your child needs the most. Especially daughters.  I want to give everything to Karianna to help her succeed, and in a moment when I thought I was doing that, I wasn't.  Or at least something was malfunctioning.  Perhaps it is just Karianna's view of conquering hard things-perhaps it has nothing to do with me.  More than likely, she really DOES want to spend time with me-just not on school stuff.  And at the end of the day, I do think that's it.  It's just hard to reconcile that one of the most valuable things I have to offer my children-my background in teaching-backfired.

So after all that is said and done, we just keep moving forward and try to do a little better each day.  Jared did talk with Karianna about the importance of respect in moments when I was working with her as a teacher.  I know I need to continue maintaining patience in all things and realize Karianna is not intentionally out to hurt my feelings-she's just a young woman growing up much too fast for my taste and she needs as much love and support as possible.  Karianna and I continued working on some acuity lessons yesterday-figurative language and more long division with remainders this time.  She did much better and I could tell she was trying to be more respectful.  It's a work in progress, that's for sure, and it is my goal to always have that kind of relationship with my kids where we can trust each other and rely on each other to help us through the hard stuff.  With patience.