Parenting Failure

Recently I entered that stage of parenting where you have daily freakouts regarding where your child is at and what you, as a parent, did or didn't do right. I KNOW both of my kids are smart. I know this because they have mastered the art of manipulation, they can make even the grumpiest person belly laugh and they talk like grown ups. Ok, maybe not like grown ups...but I would say way beyond their years. While I KNOW my kids are smart, I can't help but feel that I left out some pretty important skills in our parental teachings. Skills that it seems a lot of other parents zoned in on. What skills am I referring to? Well, those would be the basic concepts that are taught in preschool. Yes, yes, yes...I understand that if all kids went to preschool knowing everything there would be no reason to HAVE preschool, but I still would prefer my kids be ahead of the game.

My current concerns revolve around letter and number recognition. Lili has been singing her ABC's since she was 18 months and is awesome about enunciating each letter. She never really streamed together LMNOP like a lot of kids do! She can count to 20, with the occasional mix up when saying her 'teens'...and she can even count to 10 in Spanish. The best is when she says 'nueve' (9). While she has learned all of that, what she hasn't learned is how to recognize her letters and numbers. Drew and I have always read to the kids quite a bit. We would point out different objects on the pages and say their names...but we never really pointed to the letters and numbers and said what they were. I don't recall having an ABC book of any kind and I guess I just didn't think about saying, 'Hey, that's an A!'. She always seemed so young, but I suppose I didn't give her enough credit. So now here we are...almost 3 1/2...in preschool...and my child doesn't know her letters and numbers. She has learned some of them over the last couple of months at daycare and now recognizes her name, but I can't help but feel bad for not focusing on this more at home. She seems so advanced in some things...like her imagination.......but when it comes to the core knowledge she requires to get her through the rest of her life, we have failed her. I don't doubt that she is capable of learning these things and learning them fairly quickly, but I'm disappointed that we didn't recognize some of this before now.

Another thing we haven't really taught her yet is how to COLOR. I know coloring isn't something you must perfect, but why haven't we been encouraging her to color in the lines? She colors all the time...but we just sort of let her do her thing. If she wants to scribble something on the page and call it a 'dog', is that really bad? If she wants to color outside of the lines in her coloring book, should we stop her? I guess I didn't think it was a big deal before...but now I kind of do! Why didn't we guide her more? We were sitting right there with her...

What I'm really realizing is that we didn't incorporate some of these things into our daily activities. I always SWORE, I would not be a flashcard Mom...or a workbook Mom...drilling my kids each and every day, starting when they learned to walk. I'm not grooming my kids to be geniuses. I truly want them to be HAPPY and to enjoy life.......and yes, to learn in the process. This time now is for them to be a KID. They will have plenty of years in school to be drilled and do homework. Even though I'm feeling like I have failed them in some way, I STILL don't want to be that Mom......HOWEVER, I do think we could have incorporated some of this learning into normal activities. When I'm at the grocery store, I should be pointing at letters and numbers, rather than at objects, and telling the kids what they are. When we are reading, I should be doing the same. When we are coloring, I should at least try to show them how to color within the lines.

One thing we DID do right though is raise some pretty damn funny kids. They both have the BEST senses of humor and they LOVE to make people laugh. Lili has a CRAZY imagination, which Will is starting to pick up on and their vocabularies are pretty amazing for their ages too! I would never trade any of these things for being able to answer correctly when asked which letter is a 'B'...or to have them regurgitate a list of information someone drilled into their heads...but I do want them to have that knowledge too! I guess we just have a little work to do! We need to work on building some of the basics in them...and Mommy needs to work on chilling out about this shit! Oh and she probably needs to work on her potty mouth too...