Go Gabriel!
Today was homework day. Gabriel tried to talk Janette out of it, even pointing out that he's not sure how those pieces of paper got in his backpack. The ruse, though amusing, failed. Janette sat him down at the dining room table and worked with him. Hannah was playing well on the carpet. I disappeared for some computer time.
By the time I came back in the room, Gabriel had written down some rhyming words with Janette's input and help, but he was stalling in a big way.
"I might need your help," Janette confessed.
It was time for tough love.
"Focus, Gabriel," I said, "it's time for your homework."
Of course, within a few minutes, Gabriel was in timeout in his room. He had fussed. He had tried to amuse us. He had played with the pencil: anything to avoid the workbook copy in front of him. I gave him a few letting-off-steam minutes and then followed him with his homework in one hand and a pencil in the other.
I'm not a big fan of the workbook stuff, but the rhyming words, to help with reading and patterning, made some sense to me. For me, though, it was no longer about the homework. Now it was watching Janette's mounting frustration and one of our two master manipulators seeing how far he could push it. Time to get to work.
Gabriel has a nice kids' student desk in his room. I directed him to clean it off. This was ALL business. Gabriel knew play time had passed. With big sad velvet eyes, he tried to ward me off. We proceeded anyway.
Gabriel's rhyming words ran in three parallel columns down the page. Once you got the "can" word at the top of one column, you could rhyme your way down that column pretty effectively: "man", "ran", etc.. Repetition is part of the equation for Gabriel. He also needs to hear it and picture it in his head, so we made up sentences and silly stories to join the words together. We moved among them in random order, completed this page of homework, learned some new sight words, and had a good time.
In fact, Gabriel pulled out a phonics reader toy and promised to practice some more. Janette popped in to remind me it was almost time to head to the movie I planned to see (she was giving me a break to go out and do something adult!). I reminded Gabriel we'd review when I got home, so he should practice.
Well, by the time I returned, he hadn't practiced, but he was playing with the phonics toy. We pulled out the worksheet in the relative quiet of his room (one important trick for him: fewer distractions, better). He read each word fairly easily and invented some new (okay, gross) stories to go with them. We chuckled, and I excused myself for a brief, shake-off-the-2am shift nap.
He followed me. "Dad!" he was excited (also "dad" was one of his rhyming words). "I'm going to do one phonics book each day!" He patted me on the head ("pat", "sat", "rat").
"Gabriel," I reminded him, "I'm trying to nap." ("nap", "cap", "sap") "I'm very proud of you for working on your reading."
His chin literally lifted into the air as he bounced out of the room. I wanted to lay back down, but I could hear him skipping through the house, encouraging himself: "Go, Gabriel! Go, Gabriel!" He started his externalized dialogue. "Dad says he's proud of me. Really? That's cool! Go, Gabriel! Go, Gabriel!"
Laughing that hard, there was no way I was going to sleep!
-- Dad
