My first hurdle was getting past me. I panicked! What if I didn't teach him good enough and they said he wasn't ready for kindergarten? What if the kids enrolled in preschool learned different stuff from him? What if they all passed him and he got left behind? I called my mom, freaking out that Connor was going to miss all this and be way behind everyone when he started kindergarten next year! She laughed at me! Yes, laughed, didn't try to hide it or nothing, just out and out laughed. Gee thanks, mom! But then she told me to calm down. She reassured me that Connor was smart, he can learn this stuff as well as all the other kids, she told me I could teach him, I just had to calm down and take it slow. Okay, so I breathed and finally convinced myself she was right. Connor was smart. He had been going around the house for a week spelling his name.
I went to my local Barnes and Nobles and found a workbook for him. I brought it home and started looking through it. All the normal preschool stuff was in there, no algebra or rocket science. So that Monday I sat down with him to start. I had envisioned us sitting down together, me explaining to him what to do, him doing it with a big smile on his face and then looking at me with wonderment that he was learning! Again, I was wrong. We worked for five minutes and he started, "I don't want to do this, it's hard!" and "I want to go play". I would try to tell him what to do and he would just sit there, sometimes telling me no. So we stopped for the time being and I thought, "It's just the first day, he can't learn to sit still and do this in the first day". The second day came, and the third, by the fourth day I panicked again. I was about in tears with frustration because he kept refusing to do the work. I called my mom again, freaking out. "he's refusing to work, I beg, I plead, I bribe, I sweet talk, I yell, I threaten, I coerce, nothing is working, he'll never learn it, he'll be in preschool the rest of his life!" What did she do? Yep, she laughed again. She again told me to calm down. He's four, it's going to take a while for him to realize what it means to sit down and do school work. If I can just be patient, he'll learn and then it'll be easy and he'll enjoy it. At the time, I didn't believe her.
But you know, she was right. (As usual) After about a week of doing a little more each day he finally likes it. He asks me after his nap if we're doing school today. He lights up when I say we are. He's picking up on everything so quick and is loving that he's learning. He can write his first name, his letters A-J, capital and small, his numbers 1-8, he's learning to count and associate the written number with counting. He's learned all the simple shapes and colors, and I think we're going to start on time soon. He even surprised me the other day. We had just mastered writing the letter G and I asked him what letter was next. He said, "I know, H, H is easy, I can write it, watch" and he wrote the capital H. We had not even gone over H, but he wrote all by himself. I was stunned.
So preschool at our house went from, "I can't do this, he's going to be behind", to "He won't work, he won't learn" to "Great job, Connor, now let's move on to this". I'm so happy he likes doing the work and asks to do it. He can't wait to start school and keeps reminding me that soon he'll be in real school. I'm sure that'll be another panicky day and I'll be on the phone with my mom and she'll be laughing at me. But that's still a little ways away. Right now, I'm going to enjoy teaching him his preschool.
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