Miranda the Organizer
Miss Miranda, as mentioned before, is quite bossy. She organizes everyone. She can be extremely stubborn and argumentative, and quite annoying.
I've been struggling with some sort of system that we can use to reward her when she's compliant and not argumentative, and penalize her when she's defiant. We're thinking of something where you get positive marks and negative marks and then a treat for good behavior, etc.
A very simple system like this worked well with Zoë a couple of years ago when we were having some specific difficulties with behavior (mostly staying at the table to eat dinner, but a few other things). That was easier because we only needed to encourage good behavior. "Do X and get a star; don't do X, you don't get a star, not enough stars, you don't get the treat."
But this with Miranda is more complicated because it not only involves NOT doing something (i.e., not arguing), we want to encourage her to do what she's asked (because we don't ask anything unreasonable of her).
Other than the arguing/bossiness, she's doing quite well. Her violin lessons are going along nicely, and she's finally able to get a sound out of the violin that sounds like music and not so much like a cat with its tail caught in the door. At this point, Miranda still has no real sense of rhythm when it comes to playing, but that will come. Violin is a complicated thing to learn because you have the fingering, the bowing (an art in itself), and reading/playing the music, plus there's a place in playing the violin for plucking the strings as well. She's going quite well for someone who is four years old and who has only been having lessons since December.
|