I point to the jumbled paper squares and tin on the table. “He won’t match colors.”
“Oh yeah, he will,” she says and grabs him and tickles his belly. She has the same intense look as she does when I give Ian bad tasting medicine. The oldest of our family, she believes that sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do for your own good, especially if you are her little brother or sister.
They go back to sit at the kitchen table. Ian starts to cry, and Monica puts a square into Ian’s hand. Then with her hand over his hand she puts the squished red square into the red hole in the tin.
She laughs and says, “good boy.” Monica doesn’t mind his crying. She has heard crying since she was two years old when we brought her little sister, Jennifer home from the hospital. To her, tears are just part of the job that includes changing diapers, naptimes, and spooning down pureed beets.
“Show me green,” says Monica, and this time he matches the color the first time she tells him.
“Good job!” I yell and clap the way I do at Monica’s soccer matches. “He can do it,” I say to Monica.
“Sure, you have to do it fast to keep his attention and you just have to stick with it,” she says with all the authority of the eldest child.
“Yes, now let me do it,” I say and slide into the chair on the other side of Ian. “Show me red, Ian.”
He matches the five remaining colors and I hug him and Monica. Why does my ten-yearold daughter have to show me how? Then I remember another teacher in my old school telling me that it was easier to teach a whole classroom than your own child.
The following Wednesday, Mrs. Browen asks over the telephone, “How’s it going?”
“Oh Ian is matching his colors, he can put the colored squares into the correct hole in the cupcake tin,” I say.
“That’s great. Once you finally got started, he caught on fast.”
How can she know? I want to ask, but all I say is, “Yes there’s nothing to it really. You just have to stick with it.”