Keeping Caleb Busy

I must confess that about a month ago, I was really losing my mind with Caleb. I was overwhelmed with trying to keep him occupied and engaged while having to feed Ana so much. I was *really* having a hard time and went so far as to check out some preschools. I had been trying to teach Caleb how to read but he gave me such a hard time and usually insisted that he should wait until he is "big like Daddy" to learn to read.

I ended up telling Shane that preschool would need to wait until I could talk about it without crying. I felt like such a failure.

Then, I started to think about how I needed to stop thinking about how everyone else's kids are and think about how Caleb is. Things I know about Caleb:

He's naturally gifted at sports.
He's ready to learn to read.
He dislikes any kind of instruction unless it seems like a game.

So with that, we enrolled him taekwondo and swimming in addition to soccer. This turned out to be much more suitable than preschool. He's learning how to listen to other adults and he gets to interact with familiar kids on a regular basis. Taekwondo is by far making the best improvement in his behavior. The instructors are awesome and they teach the kids about respect, obedience, patience and discipline. Caleb is responding to it very well.




Also, I realized that he was giving me a hard time about school because there was no motivation. I suppose for some kids, the ability to read is motivation enough. But, as Kainoa once pointed out, Caleb is more the type to wonder why he needs to learn to read when there are so many people around who can read for him. So, I introduced monster truck toys as motivation. He gets a small toy for every six letter and then a big toy at the very end. Now, he actually gets disappointed when we don't have time to do school! What a difference! And instead of feeling like a failure, I feel so fantastic for sticking with it and figuring out how to reach my kid! What a feeling!