Goals and Schedules

I have so much to do that I don't know where to start so I'm sitting on the couch doing none of it.

My New Year's Resolution will probably be something along the lines of getting my * rear in gear * and taking it one step at a time instead of looking at the big picture and getting myself overwhelmed.


 - If I ever get a round tuit.

I'm in the middle of making out schedules for the new year. There is so much I feel we need to accomplish with the twins that if I don't get super organized something, or several things will go by the wayside. There has to be a time and a place for everything and everything in its place, including a time slot for learning specific skills.

I'm excited, but I am also trembling a little. See, the twins have been great with little to no behaviors for a few weeks, but outside of the normal chores and daily stuff I haven't asked anything too hard of them. I am feeling a little gun-shy of coming out and asking them to do something different, or something new. They are quite satisfied with who they are. They fight adjustment and development. They fight effort with more vigorous energy than it would take to just go with it and advance. I am gun-shy of the power struggles they thrive on.

I had a nice little chat with James' teacher yesterday. She wanted to know if there were specific things she should be working on with him. She has plans and goals, but she wanted to be sure they were helpful to our forward movement. I shared with her how very much is missing in all areas and that anything, and everything she does can only be the right the thing because we have to broaden out his thinking and fill the vacuum created by his lack of knowledge and experience. He needs exposure and familiarity in a wide range of material and participation. She is determined to get him to verbalize and express himself more. Once I sent a few photos with him to school. This was a great help in getting him to communicate what he had been doing on the weekend. We are going to work together on helping him to tell stories, and relate his experiences. I will periodically send her prompts and pictures to facilitate this. If she knows he unloaded a trailer full of hay yesterday, then she can prompt him with questions and he can then be pushed to tell the whys and the wherefores.

It's nice to know I have help and I'm not trying to do everything on my own. In a sense I have exchanged one set of possible and probable reasons for conflict with Missy for another. Reading, writing and math will be mostly in the school hands. (Mostly, because I can't just not be involved.) But I have traded that for violin, a program for increasing her vocabulary intelligence, and various other goals and plans. BUT if I had to do it all?? impossible.

I'm really impressed with the usefulness of my blue box experiment. Each day's box is used by both children. This solves more problems than you can imagine. No one has an excuse to be doing nothing. It avoids fights. It pushes them to do things they would not have thought of. It is handy enough to get them to do things they wouldn't necessarily "feel" like doing. Activities we know are helpful are actually getting used rather than sitting on the shelf. I LOVE IT!

This was the first time I found her writing left to right without help! It's still chicken scratch, but it's progress.