Family Challenges

Last week was a challenging one for our family.

Our oldest daughter is struggling in her first-grade assignments, particularly reading and phonics. She has been very discouraged. We have been discouraged along with her at times, at a loss as to how to spark the interest and joy in reading that we hope she will have one day! We have realized that the craziness of our late arrival to school, moving and setting up house didn’t allow us to initially create the schedule that she needs in order to complete her schoolwork in a regular, organized way. Hopefully that will change as Pedro has now started getting her to school early and reviewing with her for half an hour before school, while I stay for an hour or so after school to do her homework without distractions in the school library.

Our second daughter has been dealing with attitude and power struggle issues. Last week hardly a day went by when a battle of wills didn’t erupt over what to us seemed the simplest of issues! In her daily agenda from school, her teacher wrote one day: “Isabel arrived at school very angry. But, she got over it.” I don’t know if it is delayed transition stress, as my sister suggests, or something else but I do hope that we will come out on the other side this week!

Our son has spent the last week watching far too many cartoons as we try to keep him occupied while we empty boxes, organize rooms and install light fixtures around him. Too many cartoons makes for a grumpy boy after awhile.

I am very ready to be done putting the house together so that we can focus on the more important things of life …