Alycia Can Count 1 - 20

Alycia has been able to count her numbers from 1 through 14 for quite a long time already, but no matter how I made her memorize 14 through 20, she still got the teens all jumbled up.

For the last 1 week, each time I brought Alycia and Sherilyn for their evening walks, I'd ask Alycia to count her 1 through 20. She always got her 1-14 perfectly memorized but when it comes to 15 onwards, she'd just get stuck and all sorts of non-sequence numbers will spill out from her mouth, like 14, 7, 16, 15, 9 ..... alamak, :slap forehead: Yesterday during our evening walk, as Alycia was in the midst of counting her numbers, a squirrel darted across the road all of a sudden. I then excited shouted "look Alycia, that's a squirrel". Alycia who was still counting, nonchalantly counted "fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty" as she fixated her eyes on the squirrel excitedly. I then shouted in delight "Alycia, you got all your numbers right, mummy is so happy and proud of you" and then gave her a big hug, patted her back and praised her further. We were both so happy that she finally got her 1 through 20 recited perfectly without any numbers missing in between.

So my conclusion is I think a child learns better if she/he is in a relaxed, calm, non-tensed mode. They even learn better when they are at play. Perhaps I had put Alycia into a tensed mode when I kept insisting that she has to get all her numbers right. I was so wrong....what a kiasu mummy I am!