LuLu is sick again today – like yesterday. In “real life” I would have kept her home from school. But in the alternate universe that is our reality, school is home. So, she did a little reading and math yesterday. And today, my voiceless child took a math test over 3 chapters. I didn’t necessarily want her to, but I let her choose two items of her scheduled day to do and she chose spelling words and math.

“Mom, do I have to do the test without asking you ANY questions?”
“Well, you can ask me, but I might have to tell you to figure it out for yourself.”
“I couldn’t ask any questions during a test at my old school.”
“Well, let’s see how you do without asking questions.”

She asked two question on the whole three-page test, both about the meaning of a word in the word problems. It took her a LONG time to do this test. (Her processing speed - either because of the processing or because of the inattentiveness, makes her work very slowly.) She did get a bit frustrated, but continued to work hard. I stayed in the other room most of the time.

In the end, she missed one question out of 45 – a 97%. It was a “teachable moment” as they say. She started to fuss about the missed question and I showed her how to calculate the percentage. “Do you know that’s an A?” I could tell my all-or-nothing girl had not considered the possibility of missing questions and still getting an A. “Now, you are going to have to stop telling yourself how dumb you are while you do your math work. Because this grade right here shows what you can do ALL BY YOURSELF, with no help from anyone!” The pride gleamed in her eyes.

I don’t know if it’s because she’s sick and her resistance to my compliments is down, or her frustration level is a bit muted because it takes energy to get so agitated, but the pride in doing well on this test sunk in.

So, we did the next logical thing, we used her newly-learned keyboarding skills to email Dad about her morning’s work. Her email, that she compose herself, made me smile:

High daddy I Got an A on my math test.

LuLu

Ok, so we still have a bit of work in Language Arts. One day at a time!!!!

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