Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Homeschool Tuesday: It's Not Always Pretty


So I realized after the fact that last week's homeschool post was a bit one-sided.  When I went to write the post I got distracted by the photograph and the learning experience had between Wylie and myself (it was a nice one).  But, in doing so I inadvertently left out the other half--or more precisely the other 2/3 of the picture.

So here's the real scene:  Anti-Monopoly in progress..lovely lessons being learned by the two of us, and fortunately baby sleeping soundly (for now).

Enter:  child #2.  "Can I play?"  Now of course we let her play (she's usually quite good at board games).  But she didn't really want to play.  She wanted to rearrange the money, sort the real estate cards, pile up the houses, etc.  Of course all of this meant that she really wanted us not to be playing.  And it wasn't long before she professed this.  Clearly.  With drama.  "You always play with Wylie.  I never get to play with you.  When are you going to ever play something special with me?  How come this game is so long?  You're never playing with me..." and so on.  The life of the middle child.  Nothing will ever, ever be fair enough for her.

This sounds tolerable until you imagine the whining voice (I'm sure you all know what this sounds like) and the tears.  Until you remember the expectations within yourself as a parent to treat them all fairly and to reassure them of as much.  Until you promise, yes of course we'll play chess afterwards, (as well as do the dishes, vacuum, change the baby, nurse the baby)...

Oh yeah, the baby.  Of course he's awake by now, so all pretense of board game playing is over.

So now you get it.  I honestly didn't mean to be so misleading.  Sometimes it helps to try and forget the unpleasant times and focus on the nice ones.  But, all too often parents (particularly mothers I think) sugar coat parenting.  Everyone's afraid to admit what life is really like in the hard times.  This is certainly a topic for another post.  But, I felt the need to come clean (or messy as the case may be) about events of that day.


So there you have it.  Nice learning for sure, but not always pretty.  I still think its worth it in the end.

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