A Homeschool Chuckle

One of the young ladies that I have been blessed to meet in recent months - that means in person and not just in the blogging world - posted last week about a funny thing her 4-year-old son said. Read that here. It reminded me of a couple of conversations with The Bear when he was about that age and it seemed to be the perfect anecdote to follow the things I've written about homeschooling.

For instance, do you think homeschool parents sometimes have unrealistic expectations? Well, so do the homeschooled students.

When The Bear was 4 years old we were riding in the car with the newlyweds, Karen and Prince Charming. The Bear suddenly announced, "I'm going to learn to read this year."

Well, this was news to us, since the little dude didn't like books and wouldn't sit still long enough for one of us to read to him, let alone learn to read a book on his very own! He'd need to get over this allergy to paper and ink in a hurry if he were to actually learn to read. Perhaps that was what he was doing by making his announcement to his fellow passengers: making us all "accountability partners" on his road to recovery.

"You'll need to learn your ABC's first," I told him, meaning the actual recognition of the letters. Can't very well learn the phonetic tricks of the letters if you don't even know what they look like!

So began The Bear's journey into the alphabet. He studied strenuously to learn their shapes.

One day he was riding in the car with Pastor Dad and he felt he should confide something to his father. "Mom lied to me," he asserted.

"What?" Pastor Dad asked incredulously (or at least I hope that's how he asked).

"Yes, she said that I need to learn the alphabet so that I could learn to read. I know every letter but I can't read anything yet!" He was quite disappointed when Pastor Dad enlightened him to the fact that he had merely mastered Step 1 and that there were several more in the process.

Every so often The Bear still gets impatient when attempting to master something new and I remind him that there is a process to follow on the path to achievement. He still looks at me like he doesn't know whether to believe me or not.

* * *
Karen tweeted yesterday about Sweet Pea's attempt to sing the ABC song. Sweet Pea and Uncle Bear would make quite the dynamic duo, but then again maybe not. She'd never be able to get him to sing. :)