So, my sweet girl totally thinks that watching Sesame Street is “schoolwork”.  Because I effectively trained her that way.  Now when she wants to watch TV, she asks to do “schoolwork”.  Wow…

I’ll be quite honest: I have NO flaming clue how I landed in this predicament.  I don’t know what I was doing that led me to referring to Sesame Street as schoolwork.  I don’t know why I allowed it to go on.  I have no great words of wisdom here about a great plan that maybe went awry.  I have none of that.

I have a 5yo that believes watching TV is how you learn.

So, we are transitioning… slowly.  But that means I have to actually be involved.  If I sent her to school, I could let someone else be involved and she would just learn.  So the question I face now (as does every parent facing the possibility of homeschooling) is: do I ship her off to school and let it be someone else’s job to teach her?  Or do I keep her home?  And if I keep her home, what would be the benefit of that.

In Girly’s case, the benefit is social/emotional.  She’s an extremely sensitive kid and sorry, she already struggles with the girl politics.  AT FIVE.  Holy crap.  And frankly, I suck at it, too.  It doesn’t get any better as you get older; but who you are at your foundation, your level of maturity and your cognitive ability to process it all is very different.  So for us, trying to give her a more solid social/emotional foundation is well worth keeping her home.

She has wanted to learn to read for about 15 months but previously, she didn’t respond to traditional learn-to-read methods.  So we just didn’t do it.  She knew her letters and I think she knew her letter sounds, but she really just couldn’t manage stringing them together.  And I was too lazy to find a new way.  Enter Sesame Street.  And LeapFrog.  And Bob Books.

She is now through the first level of Bob Books and on to the second level despite my protest.  Personally, I don’t want to hear her sound out every letter.  Sound it out in your head and give me the finished product, please.  But she insists on sounding every letter out and THEN saying the finished word.  I’m not going to argue the point.  We’ll see how it goes.  She’s starting to read.  Done.

For what it’s worth, BigGuy taught himself to read and we just had to intervene to break him of sight reading (oooohhh, that autism spectrum memory of his) and push phonics.  It was pretty easy; and not like actually teaching a kid to read.  But his early reading and autistic memory soaking up tons of non-fiction kept me completely relaxed about homeschooling with him.  People used to say “You’re so laid back about it.”  I would respond very honestly with them by saying “Because this one is ahead of his age-peers.  Come talk to me when the little one can’t read at 8 years old.”

But she’s learning to read.  That’s about it.  Art class, music class, piano lesson and reading Bob Books to mama.  I need to get my act together, though, because this one wants to do science experiments.  Mama is dropping the ball on following the small child.

But Sesame Street apparently taught her what an author is.  So whatever.