Step 4: Contracts

Life is a continual learning experience. As I try to see life and learning from my children’s eyes I see that they are bombarded with a tremendous amount of new information, most they have no context for so it just bounces off. I suppose this carries on to adulthood as well – if we weren’t selective on what we engage in we would go insane from information overload.

There are concepts that I want to teach which are way beyond where Sara is in her learning capacity. But I also believe that with the right exposure to these concepts, her future point of view will grow around the lessons.

Today was the first day that Sara really didn’t want to do her math lessons. The last thing I want to do is make math something she dreads even more than she does now. So we can either make it really fun or we can bribe her. Ok, so I’m going to try a little of both. On the bribe side I took a technique from the movie Coach Carter, where Samuel L. Jackson (aka Coach Carter) had the team sign a contract – they do well in school, they can play basketball, if they don’t they won’t play basketball. I figure those kids had about the same education level as Sara, so I taught her the basic components of a contract: two people agree on something and want to put it in writing – it says what both people are going to do. In this case, Sara is going to do math lessons twice per day without fussing and help Sophia with her lessons, in exchange at the end of the summer I will buy her a build-a-bear… fully accessorized. Contract signed by both parties.

We also talked about the concepts in Psalms 15:4 – “Who swears to his own hurt, but does not change.” When you give your word that you are going to do something, you need to do it, even if it hurts.

My hope for teaching contracts to Sara at this young age is that when she says she will do something, that not doing it isn’t an option. Somethings kids will learn in school, others like strength of character and honor are best taught by their parents.