“A portrait of my children once a week, every week, in 2014.”
Lillia: This week you were very upset because you’ve been placed in a remedial math program. I know that being remediated does carry a stigma, but it can actually be a good thing! I told you about my own struggles with math in high school, and how I desperately wish I had been remediated so that I could have been more successful. I know it’s hard to accept, but a fact of life is that you’re not going to be incredibly gifted at everything you try. Sometimes you are going to try and fail, and you will face challenges of varying degrees of difficulty throughout your life. Remediation is not a punishment and it is not an indictment of your future potential; it is a gift, and I hope you eventually see it that way.
Zane: This week we’ve been spending a lot of time exploring the trails behind our house. We have been out there before, but you were always too small to really hike by yourself so you ended up being in a backpack carrier. It’s a whole new world being on the ground! This week we saw herons, salamanders, and slugs. You poked mushrooms with sticks, and collected acorn caps and other treasures. You love running down the trails at full speed, though you do occasionally get a little tired. To go all the way around the pond and back home again is about two miles, which is a pretty long way for those little legs to go on their own! I plan to make nature walks a part of our routine on days when you don’t have preschool.