January 15, 2018: Flipping a CoinTon

Monday.  I did a bit of school with the kids, today.  Luciana came into my office and did her math class with me.  When she does it with me, we rocket through her math workbook.  It really goes fast.

Liesl was struggling with her creative writing class with Dominica today.  Creative writing is full of choices and that is not something that Liesl handles well.  So she spent some time with me today and I taught her about how I learned to cut through ambiguity and an overwhelming sense of choice by leveraging things like dice and coins.  I got her to make a series of possible choices, written down, and how to flip a coin to make a rapid decision when the outcome doesn’t really matter.

This seemingly simple lesson turned out to be really important and something that was making her really upset and taking tonnes of time turned into fun and fast work.

In the months to come, Liesl would really remember this lesson and often grabs a coin and quickly flips it to make decisions that used to be really hard for her and now are a chance to show off how she’s found a way to cope with decision paralysis.  Today was a great learning and development day.

Tonight we did three chapters in our reading of the Harry Potter books.  The girls are just loving this reading time that we have together at night.