I am pleading guilty on all accounts, here. I am having a serious case of the comparing kids-itis. Perhaps it is the trial of all new homeschooling parents to have such a case, and I hope that it goes away soon.
In preschool, my daughter was very, very uninterested in creating visual images that looked like anything. She loved to paint and she would paint with great vigor, creating large swaths of paper covered in a rainbow of colors. That was wonderful, and she really enjoyed it, and that was all I wanted. Although I had to admit that I occasionally looked at the other childrens’ art work and realized that some of them were doing a bit of representational drawing. However, since my daughter’s style and my style of art are quite similar, I figured that she’d just gotten my product-oriented art genes. Let’s slap some paint some paper and be done with it – that’s my technique.
Her disinterest in creating visual forms that looked like things extended into the area of writing as well. While most of the little girls in her class were starting to write their names, my daughter remained stubbornly uninterested. Any suggestions of learning how to do this resulted in a large “harrumph!” and a turned head. Enough of that. She had better things to do. Our preschool teacher assured us that 10 years ago, very few preschoolers knew how to write by the end of preschool. It was simply that I was respecting her disinterest. Good. I think?
Come kindergarten, we started working on reading and writing. Lucky for me, in the summer time she became deeply interested in writing letters, and she’s making great leaps in both reading and writing the letters that she wants to write. Two weeks ago, she figured out how to write all of the letters of her name. We’re making huge strides in phonics too. She can now sound out some words and yesterday I realized that she had committed a couple of three-letter sight words to memory.
Now, our school curriculum states that kids don’t need to read and write by the end of kindergarten, not fluently at least. But when we go to groups that have schooled kids in them, I do wonder. All of the other children seem to be at a much higher level of reading and writing than my daughter is at the moment. I need to quell my concerns. She’s making great progress from where she was, and she started with zero at the end of preschool. I know that when she is ten, she’ll be reading and writing fluently. Yet I can’t help but compare. Just like the time years ago when I had a tall 18-month-old who couldn’t walk yet, now I have a very tall 5 year old who is just learning how to draw and write. She’s tentative about jumping into new things – that’s just who she is. And I know that I need to know this and get over the compare-itis.