D A N I

Before I dive right in, I need to state very clearly that I firmly believe both of our children are highly intelligent. You might think I’m biased because they’re our kids, but I know I’m not. Many people have commented on our children’s genius. Of course, the comments have mostly been from relatives, but I’m certain they are just as unbiased as I. Given my position, I still must add that Danielle has been acting very blond lately.

It seems to be taking Danielle forever to learn to spell and write her name. For the longest time she spelled her name T Y L E R. It was cute when she was a young 2. She had a difficult time switching from the “T” in Tyler's name to the “D” in her name. Finally she can now recognize the letter “D” and knows it’s the first letter in her name. After the letter “D”, it’s anyone’s guess what other letters she’ll throw in there. In an effort to make spelling her name a littler easier, I’ve just been working with her on learning “DANI”. I thought we would add the “ELLE” shortly after she mastered the first part.

While Tyler was in school today, we “worked” on spelling & writing her name again. Typically I say the letters D A N I as I write them on her paper, then she writes the letters. She does a really good job mimicking what I’ve written, but she just can’t seem to grasp the names of the letters. Today I had her repeat the letters after I said them. This is how it went (condensed version):

Me: D
Danielle: D
Me: A
Danielle: K
Me: No, A
Danielle: I
Me: No, A. D A
Danielle: D K
Me: No, A!
Danielle: A
Me: Yes! N
Danielle: N
Me: I
Danielle: I
Me: Good! What letter is this?
Danielle: K? I? T!

I finally gave up and asked her if we could just color in her Curious George coloring/activity book instead. She wanted to do a “spot to spot” (aka dot-to-dot). I tried to explain to her about drawing the line from one number to the next, in order, but she wanted nothing to do with that. “I want to do it myself!” She drew lines from one “spot” to another “spot”, until Curious George was holding some misshapen object rather than an airplane. “How nice,” I murmured.

She turned to another page. It had the numbers 1 through 6 in a column down the left side of the page and animals lined up in rows along the right side. The activity was to draw a line from the number to the row with the same number of animals. Still hopeful, I pointed to the 1 and asked, “What number is this?” She looked and responded, “Uh...kangaroos?” “Huh?!” “Uh...crocodiles?” At this point I suggested we change activities.

Ron thinks she was just goofing around, but she wasn’t. Maybe I fluster her? Maybe her pony tails were too tight and causing some type of brain drain? Or…maybe her intelligence is already so highly developed that I’m just not following her train of thought? My average mind can’t even think of an example to support this theory of advanced comprehension. Or maybe she’s just 3 and not everything “clicks” instantly. I think the blond roots probably tangle things up a bit in there, too. I need to remember to be more patient. After all, I’m blond (& gray) too.

Unrelated but humorous anyway: Today was a rare day in that Danielle allowed me to sing in the car. (I don’t think I’m really that bad, but apparently she disagrees.) This time she actually joined in. We were singing to a song that repeated the line “Holy holy holy…Lord Almighty”. Danielle innocently sang “holy holy holy…cow”.

No blasphemy intended.