How boys learn

A four-year-old boy is a curious thing. My four-year-old boy is definitely a curious thing, perhaps that's a better way to say it. He is so loving and sweet and full of spirit. He is so infuriating and stubborn and bull-headed. He is such a four-year-old boy.

I find myself at a loss for words when it comes to describing Abe right now. This is funny given that the child never stops talking.

Abe is a full contact sport. He runs smack into every day. Like full on smack into the day. From the moment his eyes open, he is in our bed begging for breakfast. When we ask him to lay back down, he begins to describe to us just exactly how hungry he is. The problem is actually us... we just don't fully understand his hunger, which is why he has to beg and beg and beg. He has to more fully make the case to us. This feels like big boy Abe. But if you can see the scene in person you would also notice that he begs while clutching his blankie and sucking his left thumb (always the left). So the "big" in Abe is also balanced by the "little."

He doesn't seem to have a slow speed. He runs into the room, he runs into activities, he runs to the bathroom, he runs in circles in the yard. With Anna, we could point to letters and repeat them and then eventually she learned them. Not so with Abe. I've had to reorient myself to his learning style and his inner rhythm. I made little sticky notes with the letters Kk and Jj and plastered them all over the back yard. I asked him to find them all and then put them in the correct pile. The kid loved it.

The past couple of days I've put rice into a sheet pan and had Abe use his index finger to practice writing the letters. And then tonight he grabbed my sticky notes and wrote some scribbles on them (and a couple of letters) and then he had me hunt in the living room for them. It was one of those moments when you just know that something is kicking in. It may be little, but it's something.

I'd say that Abe probably knows less than ten of his letters with real confidence: A, B, C, E, G, M, O, S, X, Z. These are the good ones. The rest of them are a little flimsy. Sometimes he will recognize several more and sometimes he will look at me and whisper "can you tell me?" But then again he wanted to make a drawing for his buddy Lincoln the other day and when I walked him through the letters for Lincoln, he managed to write them fairly well. I read in Simplicity Parenting today something that made a lot of sense. It quoted another book/study that stated boys brain growth is particularly dependent on physical movement. YES!!

Now despite the fact that I've mentioned it a couple of times, I'm not worried at all about the state of his letter recognition. That's just the particular thing we're focusing on now. If anything, I feel like I'm learning so much about learning styles. This may surprise you but I read a couple of homeschool blogs and the recurring theme these writers come back to is that kids learn in very unique ways. The public school system simply isn't geared to cater to all these different styles. For me, I feel a bit of relief knowing that if my kids don't always fit into the school mold, it's not because there's any deficit there. It's just because all kids are unique.

As a recovering student nervous wreck, I wish I'd grasped all of this when I was in school. I wish I'd had more perspective. All that wasted emotional energy... but I digress. I supposed what I really want, what we all want, for kids is to have a desire to learn and grow. The enjoyment of reading is key to this and I have tried to really pay attention to the books and stories I put in front of Abe. Our library has a very very very simple version of the King Arthur tales. And I'm going to try to do a bit more read-aloud books with him (chapter books). His attention span isn't long, but I know there are some compelling stories out there that might help. And once it cools off I think we could read in the backyard... if I can keep him still for a little bit. I'm thinking he might like Stuart Little... and Pippi Longstocking is a favorite.

A lot of the people I know have their preschool children in enrichment classes. They get focused practice on letters and numbers. But my fear is that Abe will perceive reading and writing and letters as "work" instead of fun and then he'll become frustrated with it. That would be the worst thing for Abe. I want him to be motivated to read because he loves stories. I want him to be motivated to write so that he can send silly notes to Dad at work. I guess my fear is that I would be regimenting something and he would rebel. So I'm holding off on that for now. If I have true concerns later maybe I'll revisit it, but I'd like to do it the old fashioned way.

So the onus is on me to figure out how Abe learns. It's not always easy, but I'm going to try.