Saturday, July 23, 2011

The Deal

My homeschooler wants an expensive toy.

She thinks I should go to the bank, get the money, and go get her the toy.

The toy costs approximately $100.

I told her I'd make a deal with her.

You must understand that reading for her is a chore. It makes her brain hurt, she tells me. She is reluctant to try for so many reasons. You must also understand that she has become addicted to electronics in a big way, spends entirely too much time with them, something I shouldn't have allowed to happen, but did, because we'd just moved, and it was the cop-out-easier-thing-to-do. Now I have a price to pay to get her off of her electronics and back into school, learning, chores, cooking with me etc.

The deal: When she reads with me for 100 days, we'll go get that toy. If she reads with me every day from today, she could have her toy by the end of October.

I told her not to answer me right away, to think about it.

Watching her process the idea is interesting. She's gone from being completely opposed to the idea a few hours ago to trying to negotiate me down to 10 days (ha ha) to asking what kinds of books she could read.

Stay tuned.

3 comments:

Bright Side of Life said...

I am also paying the price for introducing the iPad to Nick!
Love that she is negotiating with you! :)

Bekah and Corey said...

I'll be interested to hear what her final decision is...and whether you cave at all. :)

Penny said...

I am blinking back tears. I bought some dollar books at Target, all junior versions of classics. I know that a lot of education experts in the Charlotte Mason and classical arenas don't want you to use those - but it seemed like a good compromise to try. We mostly use picture books.

Of the four, today, she chose "Moby Dick". And we sat on our the back porch and she read to me. She would not allow me to read. Wasn't much if you compared her to most other children, but for her, it was huge.

She allowed me to ask her if she knew what certain words meant. She allowed me to tell her what some things meant. She allowed me to ask her to narrate some of it back to me. She let me narrate some of it to her.

Mark it on the calendar. She (we) began. ;)

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