Patience: Lessons from a 6-year old

Jaden is very smart, He has insight into life and is opinionated about many things, far beyond any 6 year-old I know.

Since he has been surrounded by older people all of his life, his vocabulary matured much quicker than children who are around other children of similar age most of the time.

He frequently asks questions that surprise us as to their depth and content, sometimes they leave us stammering as to know how to respond.

Anyway...

Since he was about 5 1/2, he has been asking about learning to read books. For several reasons, I was unable to begin our reading and phonics program with him until Monday of this week.

The first lesson was, to say the least, a lesson in patience. He wiggled this way and that, he got off the couch, he slouched, he looked off into space instead of at the page where the answers were! He got quite noisy at different points and acted like he had ants in his pants. After a rough start, I asked the Lord to help me to be patient and loving in my teaching... and it worked! Jaden strove hard to sit quietly from then on, and listened intently, and came away having successfully learned:

Dan has an ax. Dad has wax. Sam has ham. And several other short sentences.

He thought that the Dad has wax sentence was funny (a family joke) and each time we would read it, he would break out laughing.

He is learning quickly, and I am enjoying this experience. I was too young to assist in teaching Phoebe or Johanna, and I learned to read alongside Caleb, so this has been a totally new thing for me. I am so blessed to have younger siblings, through them I am learning so much that I didn't know before.

Life is a school, you just have to be willing to be taught.