This morning, I had a big rant against my daughter. It started with her choir project. I don't know if its common among 1st graders, but she got a big poster and just started writing her song down. She actually wrote a lot but wrote it in very small print. Then she traced in pen. I had to tell her to do it over as you cannot read it well at all and it only took a small portion of the right side of the poster. I told her to do a little planning the 2nd time around, not to write so much, maybe draw some lines so the words are not so scrunched together and space them better. I told her to do it in pencil very lightly and plan it so she will not run out of space.
She took all the suggestions at first, then I think she stared to get lazy and just wrote with the crayons. And she ran out of space. She also drew the music notes. (Her homework in choir has been to learn the different notes and how to draw them and she has been drawing them correctly. ) But she drew a bunch of b's on the poster, instead of d's for the music notes using black crayons of all colors. :( I didn't watch her and it wasn't until she almost finished I saw the problems.
We have also been doing some copy work. I told her repeatedly to leave space after the period just like leaving spaces between words. But somehow, she has never listened and in writing the words to the song, there were no commas only periods and the words came right after the period no space.
So I was really mad and gave her a big lecture about paying attention to details and not rushing. I'm not sure why she rushes through everything, whether its math, language arts, and writing music notes. She would often not read the direction in math and completely miss what she has been asked to do. And in writing her journal, she would sometimes write the same exact sentence twice or just have obvious careless mistakes. She would also do what I consider is lazy and not erase her mistake but write it over in a darker shade of pencil or if she does in a blue moon erase her mistake, it would be done half heartedly you can't really tell she tried to erase. Ugggh! I had to tell her AGAIN the emphasis is on quality not on quantity. ( not sure how many times I told her the same thing over and over again)
I was really frusted and angry with her. I hate to loose patience but sometimes, I just get very frustrated and don't understand why she does things this way! She use to write beautifully in preschool that people were always very surprised (much better than now) and now her handwriting is what I would call typical 1st grade hand writing. She has the ability but just doesn't seem to want to. A heart problem, I think or quiet rebellion. Anyone have any good advice?
4 comments:
I wish I had advice, but I will commiserate a bit. Both of my older two will rush and do a lazy job. My oldest is ALWAYS in a hurry and won't take his time to do anything. Many times we have made him erase whole portions of his homework and redo, which has slowed him a bit. Now that he is being graded in 3rd grade, he has a bit more desire to do a good job, but not always. My 2nd grader is just flighty. She can't keep a thought in her head for 5 minutes sometimes, but she does enjoy writing so she does try to do a good job with that. I definitely think that "taking your time to do a good job" is important to instill, so good for you that it's something you're concerned with. :)
Oh my, I wish I had advice too...J sounds an awful lot like Fauna. Her printing is awful, because she doesn't want to hold the pencil correctly and just quickly get it done. Araina on the other hand has beautiful handwriting and takes her time. I guess some children just need a little more of a push than others. I look at it as Fauna still being young and hopefully will eventually get it. I struggled with this as a child too, teachers would get upset with my writing but I was just not born with natural fine motor skills like some other children are born with. I also try to remember this when Fauna is writing. It's so hard to deteremine what to press and what not to press. Go with your gut feeling as a parent, she will eventually get better.
I think we need to set our expectations of our kids. We should not expect them to follow many instructions perfectly right from the start. We need to be patient but there should be gradual progress toward the final goal.
If we want her to get quality work, we need to sit with her while she is doing her work. If we tell her to do work and we leave to do something else, she will not be happy. If she is having too much fun (running, jumping, laughing) around the time she does her work, she'll rush it through since her body and mind are still focusing on the fun. She needs to calm down before she does her work and no more fun until the work is perform satisfactory. And finally, she might need to practice more on each of the instructions (i.e. focus on one thing at a time).
just found your blog through, somewhere...Anyway, my daughter was very frustrated in first grade with writing. It would be a big crying, throwing a fit thing. Now, that she is in 4th grade she is an amazing writer. I think her frustration was just developmental. I have been reading a lot lately about left/right brain integration. I really think that we all get frustrated with our kids about stuff like this but when I "let go" of my perfectionism (I gave up), she eventually got better at organizing her thoughts..and then started enjoying writing. We just really want our kids to love learning right?
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