Mommy Meltdowns

Yesterday was NOT a good day. I started off well enough. I got me started (shower, feed animals, feed me..), then I got the kids going. I goofed off in the office until time for school to start. I probably had an inkling that things wouldn't go well when none of the kids wanted to get anything done. This, unfortunately, isn't unusual, so I continued blithely on until the first snag.

The 4yo was imitating her sister. Now, don't get me wrong, I think the world of her sister. She's my daughter's best friend. I'm not, however, totally blind to her faults. One of which is disappearing into her own world while sitting next to you. Yesterday was little sister's turn. She "finished" her work, but some of it wasn't actually complete. She just kinda scribbled then hid the work in the stack so I wouldn't see it. Normally I'd catch it a bit later, but I hit snag number two.

My daughter isn't strong in math. That's ok, we can still get by. I've been happy this past week that I haven't had an overwhelming work load to compete with the time she's needed me to help her out with her school work. Yesterday, though, she realized that she needs more time (A LOT more time) than she's willing to spend to get some of it done. Her weakness is her multiplication tables (followed by division). This has been an issue since 3rd grade. I *thought* we'd worked through most of it, but apparently I was wrong. So, she gets frustrated, which gets me frustrated, which feeds back to her, etc etc. After a while I send her with the youngest to go get lunch and to take a break. It gives me time to sit and see if I can figure out an alternative course.

Fortunately for us, yesterday was also parent/teacher conference day. After talking with the substitute (our teacher is out for maternity leave), we're putting all online math classes on hold for a week. We're going to focus specifically on what my daughter needs help with (confidence). To coordinate with that, I found what seems to be a great help site. I signed us up for a 14-day free trial. I'll let you know how that goes later.

At the same time, she was apparently selected by k12 to be part of a research project. It's some sort of math game that may very well help her out as well. I'll stick with the one I found for today. Next week, we'll take time on both of them to see which we prefer. At the end of the week, I'll see which one actually works.

So, I have a temporary patch for part of my troubles for the day. These weren't the only snags we hit, these were just the big ones. After the 4yo went home, I had a talk with both of mine about other issues that had cropped up during the day. So, I don't think any of us are particularly happy with how the day progressed (or at least how it ended). In the meantime, we have the weekend ahead of us to sit back and calm down before we jump in again head first on Monday.