During covid of 2020 my baby girl was in public school. Things were going ok. She was learning how to read, and she was enjoying school enough. Nonetheless, it was always a major struggle to get her out of bed and ready on time when the bus arrived. When she left super early in the morning and when she got home at night she was often in tears. She struggled with getting out of bed, so every morning was a fight. We were super frustrated with each other. Almost everyday of kindergarten I wished I could’ve just kept my baby home so that we didn’t have to be mad at each other. I wished I could’ve kept her home to tell her sorry that we had such a rough start every morning.
To add to that frustration, I was glad she liked all the staff at the elementary. I really was. Yet, she was learning things from them that are against our personal standards. That really bothered me. Her love for her parents and respect for us also changed. Most people would say this is totally ok and normal. I saw my daughter dressing and acting more and more like her teachers and less like the ways we have taught her. It’s not really my daughter’s fault. How could I expect her to learn much from me when she gets 3 hours with me in the whole day, and part of that is arguing. I can’t expect her to still value my opinion when she is with her teachers a whopping 7 hours of the day. Despite the opinion of many people, the most important thing for me is that my kids don’t fail in the areas that eternally matter most. I don’t want them to fail when it comes to our Father in Heaven and why we are on earth in the first place. So whether my daughter has math deficits or not, she will not get the most important things in life wrong being home with me. This was just one of my kids, but I saw similar changes in my other kids as well.
“Eternity is the wrong thing to be wrong about.” Joy D. Jones
Joy D. Jones, Essential Conversations, April 2021, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2021/04/13jones?lang=eng
The schools opened up again and my daughter was in 1st grade with a different teacher. Her teacher was very caring and loving. We both started to notice that my daughter was not catching onto math. My daughter’s teacher tried several ways to help her. I was scared as she fell further and further behind. She got sick and had to stay home for two weeks. While she was home, I decided to teach her to add with dots on numbers. For instance, number 1 has one dot and number 2 has two dots.I made her this bookmark below with eyes instead of dots. I called it monster eyes. My daughter started to add good while looking at the bookmark. It was working.
It was around this time that I asked my daughter’s teacher what she thought about me homeschooling her. She thought she would do good in a small group setting.
Now fast forward two years. We are loving being home. It is wonderful to have slower mornings with my daughter where we don’t have to regret each morning. She loves God, and her priorities in that part of her life are set straight. She has not only learned addition and subtraction, but she is now learning multiplication. I love that because she is at home, she doesn’t have to hate math and feel stupid like she did in public school. I’m encouraging her to use the Monster Eyes with her skip counting and not just her fingers for multiplication.
Despite all the progress she is making, I still see that she has major deficits. She struggles with time, number sequencing, measuring, counting money, measurements in baking, and other things like that. I recently heard a podcast on . Every time I hear anything about this, my momma heart says this is my daughter. I really believe no one will have more push for a child to be successful than a concerned and loving mother.
Although I worry often whether she would be as far behind as she is if she was in public school, I know that she is where Heavenly Father wants her to be. I also know no one will push harder for her than me. This is a journal of my efforts to get my daughter help.
