Checking up

Each day I've been giving Madi a short list in the morning of things to accomplish and letting her do them.  Trying to help her along the way with short, simple reminders, but trying to let it be hers to do.  Then checking on them later and just trusting that she is getting them done when she says she is.  So her list yesterday - to accomplish before 10:00am when Mason was coming - was:

1 - Make bed
2 - 20 minutes of IXL
3 - Get her swimsuit on, goggles, towel and tickets in one place

She made her bed and got everything ready.  She did a few minutes of IXL and then returned to it later.  She said she had 6 minutes to go and was going to do it.  So she got it done and then told me she had finished her 20 minutes.  Then left with Mason.

I didn't check on the IXL reports until last night after reading with her - just a busy day with the girls.  The report showed that she had only done 15 minutes.  So Jer and I talked for a little while and then went upstairs to talk with her.

There are two things we're trying to work on:
getting done what she needs to get done in a given time (teaching time management and responsibility with some guidance and encouragement)
telling the truth about what has been done

Both will serve her well in a few weeks when school starts and it will be important for her to have some practice with them.

When we shared that we had checked her IXL time and that it had only been 15 minutes, she was very quick to ask "How much do I have to do tomorrow?" which let us know that she was aware of it not having been finished yesterday.  She didn't argue and was quick to understand that it hadn't been finished.  Doing her study time is part of her allowance so I told her that she would be docked pay the next time she said it had been done and it hadn't.

She's sitting here with me now working on her IXL time on the laptop for today.  She has 35 minutes to finish today.  She has to complete the sections she has started even if 35 minutes has passed so that she learns to finish what she has started.  We've noticed that she'll spend just a few minutes on a section (sometimes finishing it, sometimes not) and want to get her used to finishing what she's started.  So it may be more than 35 minutes today depending on how the skills go.  She's doing "Convert to a phone number from place values" right now.  Jer told her that she can't have her iPod to play games until she has logged in the time for IXL.  So far she's done a little over 20 minutes.

She'll call you in a little while or you can call her!  We don't expect you to have to talk about all of it with her when she calls - we are handling it here - but do want to make you aware of what is going on so that you know how we've handled things and how the "day to day" stuff is going.