Live and Learn

Last Christmas I gave Nicholas a wooden alphabet puzzle. It's fairly straightforward, brightly colored, and even though I knew it was a bit old ofr him I had some misguided idea that somehow this toy would be EDUCATIONAL. Somehow, if he had this toy, he would learn faster than if he did not have it.

This afternoon, as I was picking up the brightly colored letters for the seventh time in three days and trying to fit them into place before Nathan saw me and started pulling them out again, I realized how stupidly naive I had been. I mean, let's face it. I can't get him to learn his alphabet before he's ready. I mean, at this point I can't even get him to pick up the puzzle peices for me. Sure, he can fill in the blanks if I sing the alphabet, but it's hard to know what he's saying, exactly, due to the fact that S and X sound kind of alike, and it's sometimes hard to distinguish D from B or P from T. Yesterday I was trying to get him to tell me what the letters were. To make it easy for him, I was going IN ORDER. This is the letter...? "S!" No, actually, this is A. What's this? "S!" no, this is B. So we have A, B... what's this? "FOUR!" OK, see, yeah, no, not quite gettin it.

I know I shouldn't panic. I mean, he's only two. Well, two and a half. He says please and thank you a lot. He's learning every day. And eventually he'll learn the alphabet. I mean, I sing it to him eleven times A DAY! Sooner or later it's got to soak in. But I'm starting to see that I might actually become the kind of pressuring parent never wanted to be, trying to get him to learn things before he's ready. The helplessness that comes of knowing you can't actually MAKE a kid learn something is terrifying. And frustrating, when you think of it as potty training. I guess this is where I get creative and start HELPING the learning process along, since I can't actually go there for him.