Be afraid!!

My seven year old is a ticking time bomb. She could go off at any minute. I definitely find myself flinching when I approach her in the morning or try to help her with homework in the hour after school. She can get mad...very mad! She doesn't want help, questions about school and sometimes she doesn't want to see my face. I stay out of her way whenever possible.


E has good qualities too. She is very passionate, highly intelligent and driven. But those qualities contribute to her explosive personality. E is very well behaved and ahead in many subjects in school. Her teachers in the last two years have done an amazing job at trying to keep her challenged, but I know there is more I can do at home. Lately, she has been focused on spelling words correctly so I would like to teach her some specific spelling rules. I'm really entering forbidden territory, here. So instead of a face-to-face lesson, I'm going to chicken out. I will be giving her a spelling lesson when we are on two entirely separate floors. She'll be upstairs in her room and I'll be safely on the ground floor with many stairs to separate us and most importantly, protect me from any potential rage. 


I wrote this on her white board today.

That's it! Lesson is over. It may not seem like much, but she's a sponge. In her own obsessive-compulsive way, she'll love this lesson. She'll probably gather her dolls and teach this spelling lesson to them before dinner tonight. And she'll never forget that these words require a "ph". Although I think I'll miss seeing her write "elefant".