Stubborn As A Mule

I thought I would share another little episode from Miss5 that we have had over the last couple days.

But first a quick update on last night.
It continued pretty badly she kept getting out of bed asking to go to the toilet, for more blankets, asking if it was time to wake up etc...

3.10am she got up and went to the toilet. And at breakfast this morning she told me she had wet the bed again... Well I didn't hear the alarm go off after the first time. I dropped her at school and came home to investigate the bed. We had literally run out of ALL blankets and I was curious to see what she was sleeping with. As I lifted up the mat to straighten up her bed I noticed a giant wet patch UNDER THE MAT. Now let me just explain, if she wet the bed there is a sheet, with the thick rubber mat underneath and then a bottom sheet. So there is NO WAY any wee should have gotten under the mat....unless she moved the mat to pee so it would set the alarm off.....
You gotta give her credit, she's a stubborn bugger!!

Anyway onto my real story.
Yesterday when I picked Miss5 up from school her teacher said to me that her homework reading has been going really well, she's been a gold star reading for something like 7 weeks. The teacher asked Kaitlyn last week to move up to the harder books. She refused. Again this week the teacher asked Miss5 to move up to the harder books. Again Kaitlyn point blank refused and by the sounds of it was a bit rude to the teacher about it. The teacher asked if I could have a talk to her at home.

So last night when we sat down to do the nightly reading I said "if you're a gold star reader again this week, I'm going to tell the teacher that you need to move up to the harder books, I want to see you reading some really good books, cos these easy ones are too easy and getting boring" Miss5 looked at me, agreed with what I said.

Well that was easy you might think.

Oh but just wait-remember she's stubborn she's super intelligent and she doesn't want to move up to the next level of books.

We got her book out to do the nightly reading and she sat there playing with her hands and wouldn't read. Reckoned she couldn't read the word. The first word was 'the' which is the first sight word she ever learnt. I told her the word and thought we could keep going.
She wouldn't.
She knows that if she's a gold star reader this week she has to have a harder book, so she's going to do everything she can NOT to be a gold star reader....clever huh?!?

I had a chat with the teacher this morning about what happened last night and the teacher told me no matter what she's going to tell Kaitlyn she needs to have a harder book next week...BUT she's going to get one of the easy books to put in the hard box...sounds back to front?!? Well I thought so too. I thought she should be putting a hard book in the easy box.

But the reason is. The teacher will tell her to get the easy book out of the hard box. Kaitlyn will bring it home and read it easily. Then she will get used to the idea that she CAN read harder books. It will hopefully get her over the initial fear of failure that she can't read the hard books. If we have progress then the teacher will give her one of the actual harder books and it will hopefully give Miss5 the confidence to keep reading...without ever needing to know the difference!!


Seriously though, it would just be so much easier if she wasn't so stubborn.

All this work just to get a 5 year old to read a book from the grey box instead of the red box...it's ridiculous!