Sunday, March 6, 2011

Sanity...

My child is trying to steal mine.  I'm convinced she is not really a cute 7-year-old little girl, but really a midget spy sent to push me until my last thread of sanity snaps and I'm put in a nice white padded room in a straight jacket. And her weapon of choice for this diabolical scheme?....HOMEWORK!!!!  I swear it's a truly brilliant and evil plan; and this is the way she is executing it:

First she must appear to be very very smart to all those around her.  She learns to read children's books herself by age 4 and is reading 4th grade level chapter books by age 6. She has a reading comprehension that allows her to recite back chapter books in detail when asked "what was that book about?".  She then gets herself put into an advanced reading group with the librarian in the first grade.  The top 5 students in the grade (as far as reading) get put into one group where they read a short book, do an outline, rough draft, final draft summary and picture.  They have 5 days to complete the writing and 2 days for the drawing.

Lots of work but pretty straight-forward...right?  Here is where her plan really takes off.  She then spends every single week doing the work half-assed (excuse my french) or just plain wrong.  We go over the same mistakes week after week after week.  If I tell her one week not to do A & B then the next week she does EXACTLY that all over again.

I know all parents are biased when it comes to their child, but she really is very intelligent.  She's advanced in reading, math and logic according to all her teacher and testing.  She does school work 2-3 grades ahead of the rest of her class. I don't want to already be that crazy parent that pushes her to be more and be better...but is it wrong to push her to do her best? Why on earth does she insist on doing the work half as well as she is capable of?  There is no logical reason.  Thus, my conclusion that my daughter is really a spy sent to drive me into insanity.

2 comments:

  1. My guess is she may be getting some crap from class mates. Perhaps she doesn't want to stand out too much. Kids can be harsh. What helps is to see if you can find a student who is highly motivated and pair them together. This one boy and me used to compete to see who could finish our work first and get the most answers correct. A little competition can do wonders.

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  2. Her 2 best friends are in the reading group with her. She's just not competitive and honestly, lazy! She's actually said to me once that if she can look smarter than everyone without even trying why should she put in so much effort? (not those exact words, but that was the point). Zach has been talking with her about trying her hardest just because it's good for her and that's how she'll do good in life. I just loose my mind. lol She's a sweet girl, really, just too logical for her own good.

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