My Biggest Challenge

My biggest challenge in life is balancing being a mother and a teacher. Being a first grade teacher and having my first born in first grade this year has been one of the biggest challenges of my life. Lucky for us, we absolutely love Madison's teacher and share a similar teaching philosophy. That helps a lot. I try to provide Madison with extra support without overloading her. The problem is I can't teach my own child! She is very resistant. I feel like every incorrect answer she gets on a paper is a direct reflection of my parenting ability. I know! That's absolutley ridiculous! I'm working on it. As I mentioned before, Madison and I are a lot a like. She is a day dreamer, as was I when I was her age. She tunes things out and misses important information. And I can't sit in the seat next to her all day to keep her on task. Madison is a bright and enthusiastic kid. She is the kind of kid that the teacher loves, but has to work all day to keep her attention. I have a masters in reading so I feel like she should be reading chapter books by now. But she is just right on track. I got a call a few weeks ago from the reading teacher who wanted to give Madison a little extra reading support. I almost had a heart attach! Secretly of course. I attempted to maintain the utmost professionally on the phone with the teacher. The reading teacher's child needing tutoring! We live where we live specifically because the schools are so great. They have resources that I could only hope for as a teacher myself. They also have higher expectations because of it. Which means that in actuallity, I should be thrilled because my child has the opportunity to have a little extra help. It is in no way a personal insult to me as a mother or a teacher. I thought that being a teacher would give my children an advantage. What that also means is that I have to make sure I don't let it become a disadvantage. The lesson to be learned here is I went to reading tutoring as a first grader too. Now, I am a first grader teacher with a masters degree in reading. She can make her dreams come true too!