aydin...

aydin is amazing! and steiner is right on...as is anyone else who says 'better late than early'. last year aydin begged to do school, and so we used oak meadow kindergarten and "did school". it was rough...he had the focus & the determination, if from no other source that to show his older brother up. but he was so easily frustrated when his letters & pictures didn't look exactly like mine. he would would end up throwing his lesson book or ripping up the page or crinkling it, never mind the fact that i have been drawing and writing for a good 25 years more than him!

it was hard to watch, as aydin is a beautiful person...he is so full of love & patience with his younger siblings (and his older one as well :). this was a new side of him, one that i hadn't seen and that i didn't want to see. so i really watered down the lessons. we would just read the stories and draw the letter pictures in our books. AND i would only have lessons when he had requested them...that seemed to tide him over.

the difference between then & now is phenomenal...he has changed so much. our lessons are full of peace and harmony. he doesn't compare himself to me anymore. we sit side by side and do our writing & drawing and it is wonderful. he has realized that we are each our own person, and we each have our own outlook, our own personality, and that that comes to life in everything that we do.

he is loving handwork, though he has always had a crafty side. and he is so proud of everything that we do & make. he beams...really. i love it!

i have tried to be more attentive to what sort of criticism & feedback he is getting, and am mindful of how i phrase things, and what orin & lance are saying to him as well.

i noticed with legos, orin was very dominant, as i suppose older brothers are, about what was to be built & what each should look like...and his way was the only way. i talked with orin, but i also began to really look at the ships & houses & vehicles, etc that aydin would bring to show me, giving positive & encouraging feedback on every creation that he came up with. he used to build simple variation on the same ship, over & over...changing a booster here or a blaster there (they LOVE star wars!) and now does these amazingly intricate designs...robots, enormous ships...the other say he was working on the eiffel tower & today he was perfecting his take on our nation's capital!