We had our first Parent-Teacher Conference (PTC) last week. Yes, we home school, but we send our kids to a MAPEH (Music, Arts, P.E. and Health) center once every week where they can practice responsibility, patience, kindness, and other values that we teach them in a setting outside our home.
So we sat there with their teachers and listened as they showed us their grades for the first quarter and gave us feedback on our children.
Our first two kids seemed to have adjusted well. They got mostly A’s and B’s in character, and their grades in their subjects were just as fine.
Judah’s report card, on the other hand, was riddled with C’s.
C, in their school’s standards, is “Good.”
Praise God for C!
Praise God it’s a C and not a D.
Praise God they were even able to assess him at all, considering where he came from months before he joined their classes.
C for Cheers!
Everyday with Judah is a cheer to God’s faithfulness in our lives!
Where Judah was
Prior to enrollment, Judah exhibited certain developmental delays.
His fine motor skills needed a lot of work as he couldn’t control his fingers all that well. He also wasn’t communicating well. He didn’t respond to us when we talked to him and disciplining him seemed useless. He didn’t get it!
On top of it all, he is highly-kinesthetic. He moves around a lot, he touches everything, and back then, he didn’t seem to have any sense of danger. I had no idea how to homeschool him and he was already 5!
But we did.
(Read: Loving my Kinesthetic child)
We started with Artsy Science experiments like making homemade finger paint and play dough, and we baked, all of which can get really messy.
We read books to Judah and played with him.
We continued to discipline him when necessary and prayed for him. We entrusted him to the LORD.
Everyday Cheers
And miracles started to unfold.
One day, he drew a person. And it looked like a person.
One day, he sat for 7 minutes to play preschool Scrabble.
One day, he successfully shot a toy monkey onto the toy tree. I was there when he squealed in Victory and I cheered him on.
One day, he went to preschool class and stayed.
One day, he danced with his classmates.
One day, he told me he made a friend and her name is Lily.
One day, he looked into my eyes and said I love you, too, Mommy.
One days that may not mean much to others, but huge milestones in our eyes.
Raising our youngest may get really challenging, and messy, and exhausting at times, but he adds a beautiful color into our life as a family.
We’ll keep stacks and stacks of Cheers napkins, kitchen towels and trash bags in our cabinet if that’s what it takes to help him learn the things he needs to learn.
He can mess all he wants and we’ll clean them up and wipe him off . We will celebrate our life with him everyday.
So here’s to Judah, here’s to us.
Cheers to life. Cheers to everyday!
“Give thanks in all circumstances.” 1 Thessalonians 5:18