Off the gardening topic.

No garden posts today. I haven't been out in the gardens for a couple of days because I've been in bed with a stomach flu. Today is the first day that I'm back up and moving around. Thankfully, the kids didn't destroy my house. They actually did really well and took care of themselves with only a minor dispute here and there. So today it was back to the grind.

I skipped a couple of days of school with Aidan because 1. I was sick and 2. it's not officially school yet. We got back to it today. He took his first math test and aced it. He's doing first grade math work even though he's in kindergarten. He did his reading lesson and we had fun doing that. Then came science. The lesson in itself wasn't bad. It was talking about physical characteristics and how to identify them and how to make sure you are moving with caution so as to not hurt yourself or someone else. The end of the lesson he was to color a picture of three kids on a slide. This is where Aidan has his melt down. He had one last week with a lesson too. I fear my son is a perfectionist. Last week he was learning to write the letter B. I showed him how to do it first. I drew it for him and had him trace it with his fingers and then I told him to write one just like mine. He took it too literally and because his B didn't look exactly like my B did, he started crying and it took me five minutes to calm him down. I tried explaining to him that of course my B was going to look different from his B because I have been writing much much much longer than he has. That didn't help him. He finally calmed down, but I could tell that it still bothered him.

Fast forward to the coloring today. Now those of you who know Aidan knows he considers himself the "artisit" in the family. He has always been very crafty and interested in painting and making things. I really thought he would have no problems with coloring and his art this year. I was wrong. After his lesson, when he found out he was to color the picture, his demeanor changed. He kind of slumped over and started to act depressed. I asked him what was wrong. He said it was going to be too hard. I said it's just a picture. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just do your best coloring that you can do. Tears start. He says he can't do it. I color one of the shirts on one of the kids in the picture and I go out of the lines and make it look a little sloppy and show him that I don't always get it right either. Well, what should have been a five minute project turned into 30 minutes of crying. It got to the point where I asked him why he was crying. And it went from the fact that it didn't look perfect to he was worried about the crayons breaking to the point that if all the crayons broke, we wouldn't have room to store them all. Oy vey. I finally got him calmed down and called break time. I'm not really sure what to do. He's so smart and is so eager to learn. I really thought that Aidan would be a cake walk in comparison to Connor for school. I hope that I can break Aidan of his perfectionism. I just want him to do his best job and not freak out if it's not "perfect". I suppose I'm going to have to go do some research and see if I can find anything to help him out. I want this year to be fun for all of us. That is my number one goal for the upcoming school year. Which, btw, I need to get my schooling goals down here pretty soon as the official start date is creeping ever closer. If anyone has any ideas on how to help Aidan, please share!

I'm going to try and get out into the gardens later today and I'm hoping Tim will cut grass for me tonight. Hint, hint! I hope everyone else has a fabulous day!