letting go

Hardest job as a mother is to draw that line that divides my pedantic attitude and my children’s confidence.

Few years ago, I was talking to my son’s grade 1 teacher and mentioned to her that my son spells some common words wrong. I tried to correct his mistake so many times and failed and was hoping that his teacher would help me.

she said to me, Children learn by making a mistake !

I tried to get her to understand that my son hasn’t learned from his mistakes and is continuing to make the same mistake over and over.

She then told me, all my son needs is time. Eventually he will learn and I must give him time.

I walked out of the classroom, feeling absolutely annoyed. All I wanted was a little help from the teacher to help my son learn correct spelling. All I got from her was a lecture. I felt she was just not bothered to do her work and was wasting my child’s valuable time.

But as I was walking back home, I kept thinking about her comment that children learn by making mistakes.

How many times my son had to fall off the bicycles before he leaned to cycle?

A part of me had to agree that the teacher was right. But the other part of me, the mother who is a perfectionist couldn’t just stand and watch my kids making a mistake, let alone repeating the mistakes!

So most of the time I tried to fix the mistakes

Including trying to teach Yaya to cook. It was a disaster !. All she wanted was to learn to cook stir fry. She wanted to do it from scratch. Washed the vege, cut the vege, heat the oil and put the vege in the hot oil. I forgot to tell her that if there is water on the cutting board from the vege, she ought to be careful when she put the vege ( and the water) in to the hot oil !!!

I was angry with her because she wasn’t careful

She was angry with me because I didn’t tell her that water and hot oil don’t mix !!

She never entered the kitchen.

That was4 years ago.

Today I had a meeting in the morning and I came back home to find a tray of melt in the mouth muffins on the table.

Yaya baked it.

Without any help from me

Two things I learned today

1. I am the lousiest teacher on planet earth

2. Children do learn by making mistakes and that eventually they will learn to do it right. All it needs is time.

As for correcting the spelling mistakes.. I stopped trying..

2 thoughts on “letting go

  1. April: I am not boasting here. I got the TORCh results for the younger ones yesterday. Toothless is at 14.8 years level ( he is 11) and baby is at 13.2 years level ( she is 9) for spelling. And baby still spells you are as your ( you can see it in the letter she wrote to me for mother's day.) It looks like my kids do spell common words wrong and the only reason I can think of is that they are spelling by phonetic method and perhaps that is why it is getting wrong.

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