Freestone, bless his little heart, can't get anything done. It's probably because he stays up all night reading, which I guess counts as getting something done, but reading all seven Harry Potter books in a week isn't helping here. This morning, I consciously focused only on helping Xanthe practice (as opposed to racing around the house trying to get everyone to be continually productive.) Meanwhile, I crossed my fingers that Freestone would accomplish something in my absence. Anything. When I finished with piano, I approached Freestone and said, "Are you ready?" With his bloodshot eyes, he blinked. "Ready for what?"
Um, school.
So I made Freestone and Ari checklists, which resulted in this query from Scott: "Uh, why are the kids all practicing at nine o'clock at night?" Yeah, that's because Freestone spent five hours on "study French vocab/spelling" before wandering off to find his Kindle and begin a semester abroad at Hogwarts.
This whole hands-off experiment was right during the same time I decided that in order to get Freestone's 30 minutes a day of out-loud reading done, I had to be more invested, not less. On Sunday, I settled in with him and took a nice, long nap while his sweet voice droned on about "Le Chaperon Rouge" and a mystery about kids in the 1950's. Freestone loved it. All along, the problem had been that nobody was listening to him read out loud. What's the point, right? So at the end of the day today, which would have ended hours earlier had Freestone not been left to his own devices and a checklist, I sat down next to him on the couch with a French book, prying the Kindle out of his hands. (Counter-intuitive, IKR!) We took funny pictures of ourselves. Freestone's take on being funny was to not be funny and thereby make me look ridiculous. He thought it was very funny.
Even though it seems like the experiment where I was more invested had better results, I am going to keep trying the list too. Freestone likes to earn things, so as long as I don't mind him taking forever to get things done (Oh but I do mind!!), the list could be good. Or I could just take Scott's approach to homework: Fall asleep in your clothes. Mind you, this was after a combined eight million hours of homework and reading. The music of the kids' instruments at midnight must have lulled him to sleep.
1 comment:
I struggle with this everyday. Hold their hand and check to make sure every piece of homework is done and in the backpack, or let it all go because they need to learn to work it out themselves? I suppose I'm afraid of them giving up, so I need to teach them HOW to do it.
But how come my kids have way better piano lessons after the days I sit by them for every single practice? See, a struggle. But I don't know how you do 7.
For me 4 kids times daily practice equals way more hours at the piano than any mother can handle.
Please keep working on this problem to intervene/interfere or "let go and let God" (ha ha ha that makes me laugh thinking about it, who does that?). When you have all the answers I will obey.
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