November 24, 2025 - Monday

Today was a very rough day for me. It's not like everything went wrong, I just really struggled to manage my emotions. I had to run out, first thing, to get my pick-up order because there were things in it that we needed for breakfast. Then, somehow, we didn't get school started until almost 9:30. I started with Ruby and Ollie, as usual, and decided to check in with Ollie while I was reading. Okay, related side note, Ruby can't stand it when I ask Ollie questions and not her. But the thing is, Ruby remembers EVERYTHING she hears. She learns super well by just plain old listening. If I ask her questions, she answers them correctly and I never get to gauge whether or not Ollie is learning. She also always blurts out answers because she's so afraid I won't give her an opportunity to show us all how much she is learning. And I get it! She wants praise and to show me that she's a good student and she's learning. I understand. But, because of her constant eagerness, Ollie gets a little overlooked and, it turns out, she's not learning much. Or she has terrible recall. I'm not sure which. When I asked her questions today, after reading only three sentences of easily understandable information about the Greek gods, she was completely blank. She seems to always be. Even when she reads, she's not remembering what she read. I go over vowel sounds with her every single day and she still gets them all mixed up when she's reading. She just sits and sucks her thumb and, I guess, thinks about other things while I'm teaching. Then, when I ask her a question regarding what I was just talking about, she stares blankly at me and says, "I don't know." If I push, she bursts into tears and screams, "It's too hard!!" How does she know it's too hard if she's not even listening? Anyway, I just felt despair by the time I was done with their portion of the lessons. Ollie still had a ton of work to do and I told her to go play because I needed a few minutes. Then, I sat on the couch and cried big, fat, miserable tears for almost 30 minutes and just could not calm myself down. I felt like such a failure and so worried for Ollie and so mad at myself for thinking I could ever do this. I went back to my old standby of furiously cleaning and organizing to grasp control of *something* for a while and let the kids play. They stayed outside for almost 5 hours today...I think because they felt like they were escaping school. :) And they kind of were. I knew that if they came in, I'd have to finish working with them. As long as they were playing outside, I could tell myself that they are doing a good thing, exercising their bodies and spending time together. 

I called out to the kids that I was going to run and grab ANOTHER pick up order because I was missing some things I needed for Friendsgiving and guess who wanted to come along. Yep, little miss makes mommy's life super duper hard! It was good that she came, though. I think she just needed a little break from playing. She mostly sat quietly in the car and sang along with the radio. It helped me to remember that we are not at odds. We are on the same team and we love each other very, very, very much. We're struggling through some things, but that doesn't mean she doesn't want to be near me as much as she can and it doesn't mean I can't set those things aside and give her time and attention and snuggles like any 6-year-old wants and needs. When we got back home and sat down to finish school together, we had a talk about my responsibilities as her teacher and her responsibilities as a student. There were some more tears shed, but I tried to heap on as much praise as I could and that was very encouraging to her. Praise doesn't come naturally to me. I think all these wonderful things about people, but I rarely feel compelled to say them aloud. I wish it was easier for me because she, for sure, needs it and everyone else would really appreciate it too, I'm sure!

In the evening, we went to Friendsgiving. Ben is feeling like an outsider in our group again, so he was prepared to just choose a corner and sit in it all night, which made me feel like I had to sit with him. Boo. But, eventually, we broke out the games and had some fun playing for a while. The food was good and I thought the companionship was even better.