Buying self-confidence
My six-year-old is doing third-grade math. But he can’t tell time. And I was worrying that I was missing lots of stuff, and I can’t follow a curricula, and I need to hire a consultant.
Then I bought a ten-dollar wall clock at the 99-cents store, and I told him to keep track of when it was time to play video games.
He learned to tell time in a day. And now I think it’s possible that I could actually handle teaching math.
I may have learned how to tell time the same way waiting for Sesame Street to come on. I think it helped, though, that I knew it started after my great-grandmother’s soap operas were over; then I only had to watch the hands move into 4 and 12.
Your memory makes me think that what we remember about our early learning reveals what we are good at — where our brain is really focused. I can remember learning to spell the word said. And thinking that letters and words are so cool that everyone would agree that the spelling is right.
Penelope