Homework

Zoey has taken, lately, to homework.  Paper comes out of the art bin (Mommy, grab the paper with no lines!), her box of crayons, markers, highlighters, a big sturdy book from her collection to place the paper on.  She lays out on the livingroom floor, flat on her belly the way her Auntie Abby likes to study, and she writes the letters she knows.  A handful...Z, O, E, and Y, of course, although at times she tells me she wants an A or an F in her name, so her printed name looks like ZOEA.  (I took out the Y, Mommy.  I can put it in later.)  I think she is trying to incorporate the Letter of the Week from preschool in to her name, experimenting. 

This morning, while watching Elmo's All-Star Alphabet, she was thrilled to learn each letter comes in an upper case AND a lower case.  Thrilled, I think, and a little disgruntled.

"Mommy!  I didn't know each letter has a big and a little!  I can only write the big ones..."

So we lay down together on the floor.  I write out as many upper and lower case letters as I can fit on one page, and she is happy to trace them.  Underneath each one, she attempts to write it herself.  Proud of herself when hers mirrors mine, frustrated when it does not.  Like last week, when she was attempting to copy our address (Mommy, I need to write directions for Quincy to come to my house, you write and I will trace our abbress...) and got stuck on the numbers seven and five.  There were tears.  Not happy with simply tracing, but wanting it to look RIGHT. 

I worry, a little, about these outbursts.  Being a neurotic, anal-retentive perfectionist myself, I can spot one a mile away, and I am wondering if Zoey is a perfectionist in the making.  I tell her she doesn't have to know all the letters and numbers just yet, she's only three...some three year olds can't even write their names yet!  And that's okay, she'll learn all the letters and numbers soon, she can keep practicing, and we sit together, again, we write our address.  Again.  We do this until she grows bored and decorates the address with stickers.  I do not want her feeling pressure to learn things, and feeling as though she needs to do them just so. 

And yet.

There are so many worse ways for a child to turn out.  She could be lazy.  Not interested, even a little bit, in writing her name.  Hyperactive.  Content to follow.  Instead of her teacher pulling me aside to tell me Zoey is one of her best listeners, I could be hearing about all the time-outs she sat in through the day.  Zoey has never been in time-out at school, seems mortified that I would even ask.

Wanting it done right.  I can work with that.

She's moved on from her alphabet tracing, and is coloring in all the letters with her blue highlighter, so nearly every letter looks like a block.  She watches the alphabet show out of the corner of her eye.  She seems happy.