Every parent wants to teach their children and in turn you expect them to listen to the information given, absorb, process and learn. It's as simple as that... not! We can have our expectations how things should be; but the truth is the child will lead the parents in how they learn, based on their personality, temperament, etc... Until parents get a grip of what's happening and accept that fact there will be a lot of frustrations.
By now, we've learned Marin is a self-learner. She does not want to be taught, to be told to learn how to do things. She will not ask questions if she doesn't know how to do something. As a parent, this is very hard to watch... to see your child struggle needlessly, make mistakes and not be able to help them. Marin would rather struggle on her own, figure things out until she gets it. But if you take a step back... really... for an individual, this is the highest form of learning... self-motivated learning.. on her own.. in her own time and pace... learning because you're curious and want to understand things for your own personal edification. It's not influenced by any external factor, but internal. We know she has a strong need to understand everything. She's quiet about it; but we see it. While trying to understand the reasons behind things, she does ask pertinent questions to put together the puzzle. This is why Montessori style of teaching is best for her. We just have to hold our breaths, accept and take comfort that she's doing fine.
For Jack... he's much more receptive to us teaching him. It's only evident because if we teach him something, he'll repeat out loud what's being taught. He'll repeat and try to correct himself. However, majority of his knowledge database comes from somewhere very mysterious to me. When he just turned 2, he became a little obssessed with Thomas the tank engine and his friends. So we began collecting all the different trains for him. He surprised us by knowing each train's name, color and number. We certainly didn't teach him any of that. Somehow he was able to gather, categorize and memorize the information all on his own. I had to go learn the information myself from Wikipedia to see if he was correct... and he certainly was!! Thomas is #1 and blue, Edward is #2 and green, Henry is #3 and green, Gordon is #4 and blue, James is #5 and red, Percy is #6 and green, Toby is #7 and Emily is green (his favorite, favorite because she's pretty!) with no number. He has great, great attention to details! You can show him a picture with all these trains.. and they all look alike (to me)... he can see a shadow of a train in the background and know which it is.
On and off (more so off) between 2 and 3 years old, we try to teach him the alphabets... it never quite works out. You can teach by quizzing him.. sometimes he'll get it and sometimes not. So you really never get a sense he knew his letters or not. I know he does recognize numbers from 1 to 9 reliably. Today I was reading the paper and across the top, it reads "SPORTS"... He sat on my lap, pointed to each letter of the word 'sports' and spelled out each and everyone of the letter correctly.. over and over. I was so shocked. So, I showed him another page with the word "METRO"... once again, he spelled out each letter correctly! It was just yesterday we were playing with the Doodle board, where you write/draw and swipe to erase. I was writing out some letters to see if he could recognize any of them; but it was a hit and miss. And, today mysteriously and magically he knew them.
I am truly fascinated how kids learn!
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