Blowing my cover with a massive brag fest

Shhhhhhh.

There something that I think is really amazing about children. Fascinating and interesting. Crazy cool. But don't go telling anyone I said this because it could shatter my image into the gutter (how big headed am I to think I have an image anyone but me cares about- ah well).

I think it is so awesome that a person can teach them stuff and they learn it.

Not me mind you. See, I can't teach kids worth a damn. People always told me they thought I would be a great teacher. They were wrong, wrong wrong. I worked with Teena and Genea all summer on educational whoosie whatsie stuff and neither of them learned a thing. Nothing. At all. ! . If you account for all the time Teena spent either a. talking or b. trying to do it all her own way that pretty much explains it. Then Genea spent all of her time being a. oppositional and b. deliberately inattentive so she learned how to do those things with greater persistence, but that was just not what I was trying to accomplish. Not was I was hoping for.

My kids have learned far more from PBS and DVD's than they ever have from me. And that is just fine (I just wish I would have saved myself the effort. And time! And oh my shit the hassle!). Teena just sucks in information from everywhere around her. Like if you are wearing black and every cat hair for miles scurries up and gloms onto your clothes forever. She learns just by being in the general area of something new. We were out at a restaurant when she was almost 2, a time when we were still counting her age in months instead of years, and she started pointing at a sign on the wall and yelling out the letters. How could she do that? M! K! A! Now, when we are doing Genea's math flash cards, she sits and collects the finished ones and has the answers memorized. Today she made word flash cards for herself, for fun, before school.

Now Genea is in school and is like a detached vacuum hose- where it flops and flips around sucking up little things from the whole room. It is just amazing, stunning, what she is learning and retaining. The Husband and I were watching something on TV the other night and Genea started pointing out- there is the White House, there is the Court with all the judges, and there is the.... the..... let me think..... (imagine 4 minutes going by so I can spare you) finally she says, OH YEAH its the tin can. Tin Can? Yeah, the Lin Can. The Lin Can? OHHHH the Lincoln Memorial? Yes Mama, that's what I said! She is 6 years old. It is just amazing to me what she learns and comes home and can tell me about. The Liberty Bell! England! She can read entire books in a sitting. Her reading is so good she is actually a few weeks ahead of her class on word recognition-- CRAZY COOL!

Not all is pretty yellow roses. She struggles in math enormously (like me) and spends 1-2 hours getting math homework done, one sheet. She has been unable to pass her first addition time test, on zero's, because she freezes up either from the testing situation, or the pressure of the timer. But she knows her zero's, so I am ok with it. I don't care about testing. The rest will come and the teacher is trying different things to help her through. GET THIS- her teacher gave her an area to work when she is feeling distracted and Genea goes there on her own when she needs to focus!

Oh yeah, and they can both imitate Cantonese!
*snort tee hee*