We have lift off! Kinda...

For the longest time, I have been worried about Sara. She wasn't coping well at kindergarten and now struggling with primary school.

She's going through Kumon (which is helping her) and we've put her into a before-school care programme because they can assist her with schoolwork and provide tuition. Over the weekends, it's me or the husband coaching her. It sounds like a lot of work. It is a lot of work. Especially if you've just turned 6 years old. And everytime we need to go through schoolwork, there would be tantrums, tears and screams.

But this weekend, I think we had a breakthrough. We completed her homework (why is there SO MANY??), revised some lessons as well as complete her Kumon worksheets. After ALL of that, my littlest wrote a story about a missing cat (it's such a cute story that warrants a separate post). ALL of these were done WITHOUT the usual drama that usually entails.

The only thing that I did differently was that I asked her to list out the things she had to complete. And everytime she completed a task, she could scratch that task out with a red pen. She listed stuff out and we had seven on our list. As we started doing on Fri night, I told her we could space the work out until Sunday afternoon and that we would do things step-by-step.

She seemed to be happy with it and slowly, we went through the list. We completed one task on Friday night before my halaqa started. Then by Saturday afternoon, we completed five tasks. I asked her to take a nap and then we could play and do the rest by Sunday. She woke up from her nap - actually she woke me up from my nap, too - and said she wanted to complete everything on her list. I thought I was dreaming.

By Sunday, we had nothing left on the list but she wanted to do more. I was almost giddy with happiness by the 180 degrees turnaround. So we had a major breakthrough and I hope to God we can keep at it.

The breaking down of tasks has given her a perspective that the amount of work she needs to do IS finite and can be managed. And she is allowed to celebrate mini victories - a sum correctly answered equates to a kiss or a high-five from Danial or Farah or anyone else she fancies.

So at least, it seems she would be better prepared at school today. Although I don't think the before-school care arrangement is working out (more on that later). She was reluctant to let me go when I dropped her off and I wasn't terribly excited that the tutor at the care center is planning for a test for everyone. Anyways, the husband and I had a brief chat about that and we'd likely decide soon on what we need to do. All I know is that Sara's new found confidence will be dented if she flunked this test - and in all honesty, there is a higher chance she would because she is only now getting an understanding of what to make of number sentences and number bonds.

So, perservere we must. And as she said to me yesterday, she likes doing things when we do them step-by-step.