Try, Try, Try

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Hardware Busy Board
• Bead Stringing
• Transferring
• Sweeping

It'll be just a short post today. You see, I usually use the quiet that blissfully occurs while my son is napping to think, to write. My skin has been attacked of late by the horrendous heat rash, though, and it had become so bothersome by last night that I wretchedly lay awake, unable to sleep due to extreme levels of discomfort. My sleep-deprived state caught up with me this afternoon when I lay down to put Parker to sleep; within seconds I was in snoozeville. So I'm writing now, post-dinner. Unfortunately, a tired body combined with a full tummy do not facilitate composition. It's nearly 9 PM and, pathetically, my bed is beckoning again.

School went OK this morning, despite my rash-induced discomfort and enervating exhaustion. I'm thinking of creating an OSHA-inspired sign that reads, "Number of Days Without an 'I Can't Do It!' Utterance." Not really. Well, maybe really. Now that we're pretty much past the settling in period--Parker and I both rapidly becoming accustomed to our new school and our new schedule--I'd really like to focus on my son's habit of throwing up his hands at a task and moaning, "I can't do it!" It's crazy because he sometimes says those words right on the heels of having completed the task in question upwards of five times. It's like his capacity to be persistent experiences ebbs and flows. I will need to practice praising Parker's efforts rather than his achievements in order to help him gain the ability to work through his feelings of frustration; this will deter him from attaching an inordinate amount of importance to "success." If, at the end of this homeschool endeavor, my son has learned perseverance above all else, I will feel supremely satisfied.