My little Joely

Keeping this email so someday Joely and I can look back on it.

Hi, Kristin!

Yes, I think Joel DOES have fear around change, and he wonders if he’ll be successful. Luckily, he’s experiencing success when he tries new activities.

Today, I showed him how to start a number tower. This is a way to record those bead chains that have arrows to go with them, that are the squares of the numbers 1 through 10. (Not the long chains, like the 1000 chain , which are actually the cubes of numbers 1 through 10) Each short chain has a paper square to record it on. I showed him how to do the square of 4 – first counting the chain and placing the arrows, then writing the numbers 1 – 16 on the paper square. He did the 4 square, the 3 square, the 2 square, the 1 square (that was a big joke to him). Then he did the 5 square. He was really proud. Now, I stayed beside him while he did the 4 square, and I encouraged him to do the smaller ones when I left. But the 5 square was all his own idea.

Miguel came again for writing practice and did a good job of coaching. When he left, I sat down with Joel, admired the letters he had written – which were excellent – and asked him to “do another one…that one’s even better – I think you have room for one more,” until the rows were all filled. Then we looked back and chose our favorites. He put it away with every sign of satisfaction.

I think another issue for Joel is perfectionism – he would like to be perfect right out of the box and would prefer to give up if he isn’t. One of the times we see that most is when children have an older sibling who seems totally competent to them. Joel sometimes makes remarks comparing himself to Augie, so I do think that’s operating here as well.

Joel is really doing excellently – I’m going to help him put together a “going home folder” so that you can oo and ah over his work. I am going to hang on to the first writing practice work because I’ll drag it out in a few weeks so he can see how far he’s come.  He’ll be really surprised.

Thanks for the info – it’s really helpful to know!

Love,

Jean

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