On Teaching Children

Well, specifically, on teaching my child. I live in a piss-poor school district. It really is. My DD is extremely smart and bright. But for the life of me, I can't seem to get her to understand how to put words together. When she reads, and she doesn't know what a word says, she tries to sound it out. But she almost always adds letters that aren't there. 8 out 10 times she does it when I've got a headache or am tired and have hardly any patience at all. Which I know makes things worse. The problem is I don't know what is normal for her age, and every time I ask the teachers I seem to get a different answer or they comment on how polite she is. Well that's fine and dandy, but it doesn't help. I had parent-teacher conferences with her teacher and the student teacher and I brought the homework from home that DD has to do nearly every night of the week. It seems that she doesn't listen. And I don't know how to make her. I also wonder if it has anything to with her lack of participation in gymnastics and dance. Or if the combination of the loss of extracurricular activities (car is broke and there isn't any other way to get her there, because, yes, I have that kind of family) with the loss of her grandfather is the cause. Or if it's something else. Either way, I'm feeling like a failure as a parent. She's a good kid, yes. She knows right from wrong, yes. She knows how to use her manners, yes. She knows to respect adults, yes. But as a student, she's not even meeting her potential. With all of the books in our house and all of the reading we do, she's reading below grade level. And at the end of Kindergarten, she was reading at or above. I don't get it. I don't understand it. In fact, I'm confused.

I tutor students in Math, English Composition (which should probably be renamed American Composition), and a varitey of other subjects and I can almost always accurately tell their learning style and catagorize their thought process into one of two catagories (logic or circular -- there may be a blog there... hmm). But with my own DD, I can't even begin to figure out her learning style (auditory, visual, hands on) let alone how she thinks. I don't know if me, being very creative is trying to raise a logical child who will excel in math and science or if I'm trying to raise a creative child who will be extremely creative, and I'm trying to do everything the right way as determined by logical people and it isn't working for either of us.

SO maybe the name of the blog is Teaching Children, but On Being a Confuzzled Parent.