Teach him the 'write' way

It’s been 3 days from now when I started teaching my son how to write. People might not know but my very first job right after I graduated was Class Instructor in 3 colleges of STI in Manila to finance my ECE Board review classes. Man, I thought teaching my son will be easier for me since somehow I have background in this area and I told myself before that if I was able to patiently teach other people, I should do it more for my own son with all my best. And that won't be a kept promise. But of course, my college students were totally different from my toddler who is just 2 and a half years old. I really need to be more considerate since it’s like I’m starting from zero. He has no idea at all that what we’re doing is for his developmental growth, for him everything is playtime and fun. That’s why sometimes I can’t get him focus on what we’re doing. Also, toddlers have little attention span, they are long in will but short in skill. That’s why he’s often frustrated and ‘misbehave’. If you know to yourself that you are a perfectionist type of person, forget it! I believe that in parenting, to be efficient you should also know how to be flexible, not everything should be done according to rules, you know, or else you will end up stressed and more frustrated than your child. I mean, it’s not our kids’ fault if they know nothing, we should not expect from them that they automatically know what to do next. Like what happened in our session, he dropped his marker on the carpet, I’m thinking that he will pick it up since he’s not yet done writing, but instead he rolled it over the carpet by his foot. I almost burst in madness worrying that the ink might get into the carpet. Good thing, I was able to get my sanity back and saw that not a single spot of ink was there. I realized he has no clue that what he did was wrong. I gave him a warning on that very moment.

I’m so proud of him, he can now follow the dotted letters in his book all by himself, though it’s still not perfectly done but I can see the progress. This is how we started; First, I let him watch me on how to do it right, then I tried to put the marker in its best possible position between his fingers. With my assistance, we tried following the dotted markings of the letter in his book. It’s like teaching a kid to ride a bike, at first you need to hold the bike while he’s pedaling then once you noticed that he’s doing it right, little by little, without him being aware of it, you let go of the bike. In our second day, he didn’t ask for my hand assistance anymore. Sounds easy, nah! I lost some of my hair in doing these. It will be easier if you have the right materials, what we’re using in teaching him are really effective. Here they are: