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| July 2011 - Our Annual Fourth of July Get-Together |
One
morning last week, my younger daughter called me to the kitchen table, asking,
“Can I have help?”
The
question didn’t alarm me because she asks nearly every day right after working
through a lesson in her homeschool math book. She generally comprehends the
material well and simply wants clarification on a few problems before typing
the answers into the computer.
But that
day was different. As I pulled up a chair, she kept her head down, face buried
in an arm draped over the math book. And even when I asked where we needed to
start, she didn’t respond. Then after a few minutes, she finally looked up and
exclaimed, “I don’t remember how to do any
of this!”
I knew
that wasn’t true. We’d taken a break from our usual routine for a few days, but
I was certain she’d not really forgotten. Yet I could also see that only a
handful of the 20 questions were answered.
Purposing
to be gentle, I nudged her into examining the first problem. The process was
like pulling teeth – without anesthetic; it was clear her mind was elsewhere. I
guided her through a few more problems, but we stopped at number five because
she couldn’t even speak the answer I’d let her use the calculator to cipher.
Instead, she just silently mouthed it as tears filled her eyes.
Though
math is not her favorite subject, she hadn’t actually lost her ability to
comprehend. Nor was she exhibiting disobedience or belligerence to get out of
doing her work. But her motivation to focus on the nuts and bolts of the lesson
had, indeed, temporarily disappeared, replaced with deep grief.
You see,
a few days earlier, her only grandfather had succumbed to the effects of COPD
and cancer. So instead of honing in on pre-algebra, her mind was wrestling with
the reality that she’d never again see her beloved grandpa on this side of
Heaven. And though his passing was not unexpected and she does cling to the
hope of Heaven in Christ, her heart was ripped by this, the first significant
human loss she’s suffered.
I’d not
been an ogre by asking her to do math. We’d taken a couple days off after getting
the news, and we’d all decided together that we’d try to “kind of get back to
normal.” But I was fully prepared to adjust as needed, so that’s as far as we
got with math that day. It would keep.
Kids –
and adults – are always motivated by something; there’s no such thing as an
“unmotivated” person. However, they’re not always motivated as we think they
“ought” to be. Sometimes that’s an obedience issue. But we do our kids a grave
disservice if we assume that their “misplaced motivation” is always wrong.
My girls
and I didn’t err in attempting to “be normal” that day; getting back into routine
after a loved one’s death is sometimes therapeutic. However, I would have damaged
my daughter if I’d ignored her heart in favor of making her slog through
solving for unknown quantities. When our kids struggle, we need to resist
labeling them as “unmotivated.” Instead – if we seek to be responsible parents
– we must dig to find the root of the difficulty, and then help them manage it
appropriately.
*****
For everything
there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.
(Ecclesiastes
3.1, ESV)
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| January 2015 - A Belated Christmas Celebration |
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