Revelations from Readers

There have been so many great things about my children's Montessori experience so far. They are learning and growing in so many regards. One of the great challenges for me now is working with them on their reading homework. Each Monday and Thursday readers are distributed. Parents are expected to practice with the children before they return them. If the teacher is satisfied with their mastery of that particular reader, they move on to the next one.

Even though they are in three separate classes, the curriculum is the same. For my uber-competitive offspring, K & R, the race is on for who will advance the fastest. Two to three times a week I sit with each of the children while they read their 12-20 page readers. Their approach to this work--and their response to my correction is such an insight into their personalities.

K is a competitor from the word go. She was the first to receive a reader simply because she made up her mind she wanted one and persisted in asking her teacher constantly when she could bring one home. Her challenge is sticking with it. She, like her mother, is a sprinter more than a marathoner. She gets bored. She wants to move on to the next reader without really mastering the one she is on. She needs verbal affirmation and when she isn't getting enough she'll prompt it with questions like, "Am I a very good reader? Was that so smart?" I was very similar as a child. Additionally, she gets very frustrated with challenging work and either makes up an excuse to move on or starts acting silly to cover up for the fact she is having trouble.

R is one book behind K largely because he started later. He is advancing well, but when he hits a challenging word won't always attempt it, preferring instead to bat his eyelashes and with a sweet baby voice say, "Mommy, can you help me with this word, pweeze?" As for motivating him, words of affirmation have a powerful effect--often causing him to physically expand with pride.

P is our steady plodder. He refused to even do his basic phonics work the first month of school. One day I mentioned to his teacher that he was reading the readers K brought home and she looked astounded. She later confessed to me that she suspected I was a proud mother, exaggerating a bit. To be certain, she skipped the basic phonics and gave him some more advanced work just to gauge where he was--and he nailed it. My quiet tortoise of a son has now passed the hares in our family and is reading two books ahead of them.

I am discovering that their innate competitiveness and benchmarking with one another has its advantages and disadvantages. When channelled appropriately it is a great motivator, but I am finding more and more opportunities to point out to them how differently they have been gifted. This will be the challenge of the next decade and a half in our home, I am sure.

Homework is causing me to really practice my deep breathing and patience as we work through their different learning styles, fear of failure and resistance to challenges. As we struggle to find a rhythm, I am realizing how much of what frustrates me are the traits they inherited from me. Ouch. I am also confident that it was not God's design for me to homeschool. I am just not cut out for it!

Thank heavens for teachers!