All Tied Up

My mom is really good at teaching kids how to learn for themselves. Not just her own kids, although I would say my brothers and I are the pudding where that proof lies, but a couple of generations of children from other families--through tutoring and foster care among other venues--as well. I do not remember a time before the time when I was being taught letters and numbers and reading and information-gathering. Learning has always been a focus of my world and my mother was a willing and ever-present teacher. So, the few areas where we were on our own seemed pretty foreign. I can really only think of two skills where my mom took the you’ll-figure-it-out-yourself approach: telling time and tying shoes. Which is why I couldn’t tell analog time until I was in fifth grade, and why I think Velcro is a great idea. I think it’s a true testament to the effectiveness of my mom’s teaching ability that the only two things she didn’t teach me I was never very good at. Especially the darn shoe-tying thing. You’d think that being a girl (with theoretically better small motor skills) and being interested in yarn-based activities like crocheting and knitting, it would have been easy. But shoe-tying seemed less like crafting and more like math--percentages, remainders, and so on. Which explains a lot. In Elizabeth Winthrop Mahony’s The Shoelace Box, Steven is a smart kid who knows many things, but keeping his shoes tied eludes him. It happens.

http://www.amazon.com/Shoelace-Box-Little-Golden-Readers/dp/0307602338

http://elizabethwinthrop.com/