Cha.. Cha.. Changes!

I really really don't want to jinx myself but I am taking a chance here to tell you that I am seeing changes already! Little brief changes but its definitely a start!

Yesterday in the car on DAY 3 of our homeschooling journey (our day off at that) Lexie randomly blurted out that next year she wants to go back to public schooling. Knife through my heart. Felt like a failure already on day 3, I admit. I really thought it was getting better but apparently she was holding back on me. She paused to wait for my reply. I just simply said we shall see.

With that said most of the day yesterday Lexie went about asking me what she could do for me and told me to not worry about answering to the boys that she could handle them. Oh boy I thought! But I let it be and set back and watched waiting to cut her off the first time she screamed at them or gave the big attitude UHH!!! For the rest of the night she continued without any of those. I was quiet surprised and excited inside. She would come to me a couple times and said "Mom, I am trying to be patient but they wont listen to me." So I told her how she could do something differently and she went off to try it and it worked! 

Today while doing her Language Arts she was assigned to play hangman online. She became quite afraid as soon as she saw it was 5th grade spelling hangman. She immediately froze up and didn't want to do it. I chanted her on and sat with her. I let her try a few. She got them wrong but then I started helping her. "Lexie, dont get into my _____ space." "Its _______." The answer was personal. She had almost all of the letters except for 3. So once she heard those tips a light bulb went off. The next word came. I told her to pick the most popular vowels and consonants then sit for a while and think about what the word could be. She only guessed one of them on her own but if it wasn't for me sitting there giving her that little nudge of confidence each time she wouldn't have done that one on her own either or even tried. Each time after we both got one right she would light up so excited and reach out for a high five. I really don't think in Public school she would have been allowed the one on one time for someone to see she just needed to be given a little confidence on how to go about handling her work.

We went on a walk this morning around the block. Alexander was determined to wear his rain boots even though their a few sizes too big for him. He got down one side of a street and was so tired of walking in those big heavy shoes and he was falling way behind us. Lexie stopped and let him catch up and grabbed his hand to walk with him. It was the cutest sight to see them hand in hand. She often gets sad wondering why he isn't as close with her as Dakota and him are. I remind her how she treats him compared to how Dakota treats him and tell her maybe she should think about the way she acts with him. So this was a huge deal.

So today I pat myself on the back for one day down as a success at least in my books ;)