Breakthrough for A

The creative writing course has been taking a lot of time lately, I have been spending all my time writing a story. It will be read and discussed in class, so I try to do something I am happy with. I will put it in the blog when I am done with it. A lot of thing happened in the time since my last post. First the title of this post, it is important for us.

I was worried about the speaking abilities of A. F started speaking quite early and her teachers at the daycare and school always told us that she had a quite broad vocabulary for her age - sorry for showing off, I am just proud mom. A in the contrary is 2,5 years old and we have trouble understanding what she says. Especially her omitting of letter at the beginning r the end of the words and pronouncing a lot of letters the same way, makes it hard on every one of us. We don't understand her and she is pretty frustrated. She never said her sisters name right, one of the letters she cannot pronounce is the F. She uses P instead of it. Today at dinner - unfortunately P was not home -, just like it was the most normal thing, she said her sister's name, with an F. We looked with F to each other like we didn't hear it right. A repeated F's name without any trouble, like she always could do it but she was teasing us. P was pretty surprised too. I am just a bit sorry tat I didn't get her old version on video, it was just so cute and she won't say it anymore. My little pig-headed lady.

A's frustration

Now I can go back to almost two weeks ago when A's frustration was on its max. She was quite tired those days. F's party, meeting people, ma-pa grocery shopping till too late for kids.... I picked her up from school and in the car I asked her what she did at school. She said something I didn't understand, so I asked her what she said. She repeated exactly the same thing, she was trying to tell me. I just couldn't understand it. She got frustrated, she cried till home and then she kept on crying for the smallest things for the rest of the day. She couldn't sleep early, she was just too frustrated and tired for that. Next day, the same thing. She said things, I didn't get them and the frustration.... Third day, I got punished. She started talking baby. But really, we were back to tata's and dudu's. She wouldn't say a word. And she started talking more than usual, like in her pretend plays with the dolls - by the was she loves to play with dolls - she went on talking to herself, all in baby.

I was a bit worried. Just couple days before, she had her regular tests and I had said to the nurse the I was wondering why she is not talking good yet. Of course she is learning 3 languages at the same time, but still, she also pronounces the words in her own way. She sometimes omits the beginning and/or the end of words, as I wrote before; she doesn't pronounce a lot of letters correctly, P instead of F and the 'sheu' sounds she uses for half of the alphabet.... with her history of ear infections and everything, I was really wondering if she could hear well. So this baby talk thing worried me.

I left a message to her teacher, just to ask if she could tell me what she was doing at school. That way when I ask her about school, I could guess what she was saying. I had a very nice conversation with her teacher, who by the way is incredibly nice, and I found out that she was very interested in English these days. She would let Mrs Tate tell her the names of kitchen utensils, colors etc. That's why she was really tired at the end of her school day, it is not easy to listen to another language for hours. At he same time, I was telling her at home names of stuff in all three languages. I skipped the English versions right away and when she came from school I stopped asking her what she did but I asked her 'did you do cutting' or 'did you do painting', using the names of the activities as she was used to. Add to all this two nights of good and sound sleep, she was back to her happy self.

Even happier actually. She made clear to me that she wanted things as school, less toys, less choices, more independence - not that we could ever stop her from doing what she wants, did I call her pig-headed before???!! - I rearranged her room. he can take her clothes for school herself and she has just a limited amount of toys waiting for her. She now comes from school and plays hours with her dolls, really hours. It is so nice and so cute to see. The next step is her potty training. she is potty trained at school and mostly when we are outside our house. But home is the place we pee and poo right were we are. And we are never on the potty.

F is homesick

As A got out of her frustration, F got in hers. It started with her crying at one night. She was missing her friends (actually she said the names of her cousins) in Holland. Right after her b-day party, we thought this was expected. She was used to have family wit the b-day and she loved to see her cousins at our house, celebrating with her. Then the next day, she came from school and she said she was very mad at her teacher. She wanted to do some task and she was not allowed probably because she was 5. She was so angry she almost cried but she didn't let her teacher see that. She didn't like the work she did and there was no other work she liked either. She wanted to bake cookies and cut apples and carrots - yes, that's what they do at Montessori - but she probably wasn't allowed any more. I told her to ask her teacher why she wasn't allowed to do those works. F didn't know exactly but no one from 5 year old group did those things. I just told her to ask why she wasn't allowed. First lesson: communicate!

Another day, she came home again, so angry to her teacher. She had to do a work she didn't like and she had tears in her eyes - didn't show to her teacher again...

Night after night, we had conversations about Holland, missing people, the situation at school. It was very special. She is quite Papa's daughter but she wanted to share those things with me. And she really speaks like a grown up in such situations. I could feel her frustration but I decided to keep it low, not talk to her teacher right away etc.

For some other thing, her teacher called and left a message on the answering machine. At the end of her message, she added that F was doing very well at school and those days, she was pushing F a bit for her English and her reading. Aha! There it was, the reason for all that trouble. I told F to listen to the message and I translated her just in case she didn't understand everything. She looked happy and shy. My little big girl just didn't think she was going well enough. She said her friend Rowen was doing all those works better. Well, Rowen is almost 6 and goes to the Montessori school for much longer. The frustration just went away. We still have the 'missing Holland' part going on, but not as bad. Those little minds are just so sensitive.

Today, F said she was working on the letter W. Her teacher said to her 'the first one is the best'. F turns this around and concludes that her other W's are bad. I felt the frustration there and I told her that the first one was probably the best and the other ones just good. I was pretty proud of my little creativity. Oh, no, I think I have to be alert at all times for the right answers to keep my kids away from frustration.