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Friday, August 27, 2010

It's Complicated

You’d think being a teacher by profession would make you a natural for teaching your own kids. While it’s true those called to teach have a certain approach to the world inevitably shared with the children they’ve brought into a family, the complicated nature of formal teaching (and the complicated nature of parent-child relationships) can challenge even the most skilled educator when it comes to their own small people. Much like any part of parenting, each parent has to choose a method that works for them. Sometimes you can teach any kid anything--except your own kid. I tried to work in Keilana’s classroom from preschool all the way through sixth grade, and we never could quite make it work. There was something about my presence in her learning domain that just brought out the most frustrating aspects of our relationship. Connor, on the other hand, would completely revert to earlier days and spend the whole time being my “baby” instead of branching out and participating. Addison, my strict little fraulein, had/has such a need for control, that having another person telling her what to do during the learning process was one person too many. So, despite having taught over three thousand other peoples’ children, the first three of mine have been unimpressed with my academic credentials. And now there’s Scarlett. We’ve been working together a lot lately and I think it’s going pretty well. In Susan Hood’s The Schoolhouse, Elmo and the Sesame Street crew go to school…without their mommies.

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Sesame_Street_School


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1 comment:

  1. Everyone else's kids think I'm great to work with. Why doesn't that translate to my house? You must have done something right because you have three sharp sons.

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