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New-ish and Need Help Motivating My DD!
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Hi my name is Joy and I am an American living in Indonesia. I have popped in to comment from time to time, but I am now looking forward to posting more regularly here. I have 5 children DS 10, DD 8, DS 6, and DS twins 3yo.
My question is about my sweet daughter. She is an amazing little girl. Smart, funny, sweet spirited, and kind. She love learning and loves to read. She reads for fun outside of school, pretty much anything she can get her hands on.
However, I need help figuring out how to handle this situation.
She is a hopeless dawdler (think Anne Shirley).
She has a huge imagination and loves doing her school so much she is in no rush to finish. Yesterday, I finally said, you know what, I’m not going to nag you to get done. And if that means you have to do school all day long, so be it. Needless to say, she was finishing her math at 7:30 last night. The problem is she doesn’t care. She had fun. She enjoyed taking her time, not rushing, just going at her own pace. She can narrate four pages of reading and narrate for a full 15 minutes! Yesterday she had 4 pages of reading followed by a written narration of what she read. She filled up 3 entire pages of narration. And it was good! It’s just that it takes so LONG!
It backfired!! I was hoping that she was going to miss playing outside, miss free reading, miss all that free time, but no. She was happy as a lark. 🙁
I keep short lessons. I move from Books to Things (thanks Sonya for the DVD!), to keep it interesting. Honestly, I feel that I require the habit of attention and I don’t fill up their time with needless boring study. If she was to keep on task, she could be totally done with all school except for Read Aloud by lunchtime.
So, how do you motivate a child like this? Maybe I should just relax, I don’t know.
Any advice you have for me would be much appreciated!
Blessings,
JoyinIndo
What a sweet little girl! Hope you get some good advice. My kids are the opposite. They want to finish quickly to be done—they enjoy our books but still want to finish requirements in order to move on. Is there a way to have her done by lunch with what requires you being involoved and anything beyond that do on her own time? Like x amt. of time to do a narration, rest finish later. X amt. of time for math, rest finish later. Maybe set a timer. Probably not much help…never had this issue!!! Blessings, Gina
Thank you Gina, that is good advice. Thanks for taking the time to answer me!
Anyone else have any thoughts?
Thank you!
Blessings,
JoyinIndo
JoyinIndo,
I LOVE the description of your daughter, I have one that sounds like she might be a little similar, though she’s only 6 so we’ll see…
You know, if she’s doing a good job, you kinda hate to punish her, but on the other hand, as she grows older and has more responsibility she will have deadlines, whether it’s at work or at home, so she does need to do things in a timely manner. I wonder if you might give her reasonable time periods in which to complete her work, perhaps allowing more time than you would for the “average” child, but then sit down with her and set some rewards for finishing in the set amount of time. The rewards don’t need to be costly, just little things that she likes. For example, I reward myself with a cup of coffee and a little book time when I finish certain daunting chores. Perhaps your daughter likes to paint or have tea parties or something that you wouldn’t normally let her do on a daily basis. You could give her a sticker for each subject she finishes in a timely manner and when she gets an alloted amount she gets whatever the reward is (I’m guessing with all those brothers there’s lots of little girly things that could motivate her that she doesn’t ordinarily get to indulge in). If you let her know the reason you want her to finish within a certain time (to teach her time management) and that it is sinful if she does not obey (assuming she is capable of obeying of course) that might be motivation enough. My daughter that sounds similar to yours just HATES to disobey or disappoint me, and when I explain why seemingly benign behaviour is sin she is very agreeable to learning how to change.
Baby is crying so I’ve got to run!
Rebekah
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