Light Bulb Moment!

Okay so last night we sat down with Gage and told him we had made the decision to home school him. He did not freak out like he had prior to his "time off" and simply just said he would if Kain did. So we explained to him that Kain seems happy in school this year so we were going to leave him. We then could see the anxiety building in him as he tried to collect his thoughts. Then he blurted out in a rather troubled voice; "but I'm in second grade and I don't even know my subtraction and times!" Well, we does know subtraction we have heard him do it several times in every day life. So we asked him to explain to us what he was confused about with Multiplication. He replied "I don't even know easy ones like 2x5" So I asked him to think about it and try to tell me what he thinks 2x5 is. So he sat there for a while and then said "29." Kain right away being the good student that he is started to try to explain where he had gone wrong so I nicely asked Kain to stop so that Gage could explain to us how he came to his answer. What we heard was amazing!

I said "Gage, explain to me how you got 2x5=29." Well, you take 5 and then you take 5 of those and you get 25, then you take 2 and take 2 of those and get 4 and 25+4= 29." ....... YES! Yes, you are correct, you DO know how to multiply. This poor little child is so scared and worried about getting these "tough" problems done correctly he is making it harder than it has to be and working himself up in the process. The minute then that Kain and I were able to explain to him that the two problems within the problem was multiplication he was able to then do them against different numbers. You should have seen his face light up?! His smile returned and started rattling off multiplication tables left and right including the one he now found to be VERY easy 2x5=10!

We no longer second guess our choice to remove him from school and he seems quite happy about the decision now.