As I sat there with Kaia yesterday evening, struggling through getting her to complete a single page of Chinese strokes, specifically, the “na” (捺) stroke—the sweeping downward-right stroke, I thought about my mom and all the work she put in for me before I even got to kindergarten. Before I entered kindergarten and during my preschool years, my mom had taught me the entire English alphabet. She taught me all the letters, both lower and upper case. She made me write them over and over and over again. Before kindergarten began, I knew how to write all of them on my own, and in relatively good form. In addition to that, she taught me all the numbers and had me do basic addition and subtraction in hopes that I’d be more advanced than my peers. While I was initially more advanced than the majority of them, that quickly ended by the time I reached third grade. Multiplication and division did not come naturally to me; it was a painful and miserable process before I finally understood it. I do not think I was the slowest of the pack, but I was most certainly not the quickest in that realm. The concept of “carrying over” numbers was a true struggle. To this day, my mom can do quicker and better mental math than I could even dream of.

When Kaia started 3K, I did momentarily think that maybe I could model my mom and proactively teach Kaia these things in her 3-4K years. But I thought to myself: she has a real curriculum she is following in her two years of preschool. She’ll be fine! They’re going to teach all of that to her, right?

Wrong. They taught her recognition and sounds. We all know that recognition is not the same thing as applying and writing it all yourself.

We are still struggling with writing the date on each page of homework. I wonder when we will get over this hump. She still does her “9” and “6” backwards. She doesn’t do a real “8” that has two circles on top of each other. She also does not like to do the same thing more than three times, apparently, and then has a total melt down. I have to let her cry it out. Then, I myself have to take a deep breath and try not to yell.

I wonder how much whining, screaming, and crying I did when my mom started the alphabet and numbers with me when I was just three years old. I suppose next time I can ask. But whenever I ask her questions about my childhood, she has only vague recollections and does not remember the details. I cannot blame her for that; that would be 37 years ago now. So maybe through this blog, I can preserve some of these “fun” and truthfully painful memories so that one day when Kaia gets older and she asks me, I can simply reference this blog and tell her what a total brat she was and give very clear, concrete examples. I can also share how many times we had to insist to her that she did not have the option of giving up, that she “can do hard things” about a million times.

Massive kudos to my mom, though, for getting me through all that before formal schooling kicked in for me. I just knew I wouldn’t have the patience to do it with my own kid even though my mom did it with me.