Persistence

"You've been off work all week while I was away, so how did you wear yourself out so much?" interrogated my dear man on his return from a trip to England. While the answer might have been obvious to him given the gleaming floors and organized closets, I took the opportunity to launch into the daily to-do-lists that kept me running from 6 to 2 followed up with parenting our little darlings once the school day was complete. I do enjoy the occasional challenge that being a stay at home mom offers: fixing the dishwasher, cleaning out the furnace ductwork, tinkering with a few wiring problems. Every problem presents a puzzle to be solved, a new adventure that expands the grey matter, and recently I've discovered that this is called a "growth mindset". Tony intuitively knows that keeping my mind busy at work is preferable to me exploring my physical capabilities on the home front and we agree that I am likely to die in some bizarre household accident if we ever retire.

I have been blessed with 2 children of completely opposite temperments, mindsets and capabilities. Lily is my social butterfly, loves to be the centre of attention, possesses exceptional physical strength and energy, but has difficulty with logic and memory. This has recently been labelled a language processing disability and ADD, likely related to the poor situation she found herself in as an infant, exacerbated by over zealous parents that exposed her to 4 languages by the age of 5. Label or no label, it requires several hours of my attention each evening to review and reteach her most of her day's subjects. Lil doesn't really view learning as a growth opportunity which I thought may be typical of kids until Grace started school.

"I want to do some homework" announces Grace every day when she arrives home from school and if I let her, she will continue mowing through books until bedtime. She listens intently to Lil's grade 4 lessons and reiterates them to annoy her big sister. Grace tantrums to get assistance in those mundane activities unbecoming of a princess...making the bed etc, but when it comes to new learning activities, the response is usually, "I can do it myself", "leave me alone to do my work" or "I know how to do it". She seems to have little interest in the approval of others and barely tolerates human company, while preferring schnauzer companionship.

Dealing with yin and yang pushes me to uncover new and creative ways to help them meet their potential. Convincing Lil that learning was something I did for fun wasn't happening so recently I purchased the mindset works program in an attempt to help her take responsibility of some of her learning experiences while making it seem more like fun. I'm not sure that it is anything other than a new game for her, but Grace is stuck to it like glue, learning more about the temporal lobe than any 5 year old should know. I suspect the solution for Grace may be signing her up for girl guides to expand her social horizons beyond canines and continue to search for ways to light Lil's spark for learning.

And so we've launched into a new growth experience...understanding the mind works of a child with ADD and word processing disabilities. "You might set your sights as little lower for Lily" suggested the specialist at a recent appointment. Taking her advice I left Lil to experience a couple of weeks of independent learning, resulting in us rushing through the last 6 math chapters to ready her for a math test this week.
"Which is heavier Lily, a bike or a dictionary?" I question
"A dictionary, because it has more pages" she replies.
And so Lil gets a trip to the garage to compare the weight of her bike with the dictionary, while I crack open a bottle of wine with my boy in preparation for another day of the same.

As I look back on my own education, learning wasn't always a lot of fun....my grade 3 teacher let my parents know that I was as "slow as molasses in January" and they would save themselves some disappointment by lowering their expectations of me. However, one trait I've always been well known for is my "stubbornness", or persistence as I prefer to call it, and I wonder if my grade 3 teacher might expand her mindset if she met me today. For my 58th birthday this year, I was given this wonderful plaque reminding me that my persistence has paid off so far, and with a little luck and some serious longevity, I'll be able to pass the torch on to Lil and Grace.