Small Victories

Betty helping the 2nd graders work out some word problems in their math books

Yesterday, I spent 3 hours with a rather difficult child trying to get him to stop crying and just do his homework. He cried and cried saying that, "There is just too much homework and I don't want to do it." At one point he tried to rationalize with me and say, "I don't like letters or words. I only like numbers. Let me do math instead. When will I ever need to know this in the future?" Those of us trying to help him honestly sat back and giggled in secret at first because he's just adorable. And the agony that he was in was being expressed in such an over the top and over exaggerated manor.

At one point, I told him to come outside with me and run laps on the sport court. We did. He laughed and he beat me. And then gladly walked back into the homework room to try again only to start crying again within a matter of 3 minutes.

The other children in the room, one after another, finished their rather long homework to all of us cheering for them and throwing them into the air, giving them high fives. The proud looks on each of their faces was priceless.

But not for my partner for the day. He just kept crying and kept writing and yelling each letter as he wrote them.

I had to celebrate the fact that this particular child was actually doing his homework - regardless of his awful attitude that day. He has done his homework every single day this year. Last year, I think he completed his homework maybe 10 times. He is learning to read. He likes the reading games that Ruby made for him. He is very good at math. And most days, he can be calm enough to sit in a chair and do 1 to 2 hours of homework. That's incredible. That's night and day improvement from a year ago.

Tomorrow, we are going to take all the 1st and 2nd graders to McDonalds for some happy meals to celebrate how hard they are working everyday. I might even buy them ice cream cones.