Wine Country Mom

This has been a rough year for my 8 year old son.  2^nd grade held a lot of new responsibilities and work.  Suddenly he was in charge of his own assignments, including taking ownership when he forgot to turn things in.  He spent many recesses on a bench at the playground, finishing assignments he had forgotten to bring home to do.  And he spent the first couple of months with a head so full of information that he took several steps backward.

This is how my son learns.  He is so used to things coming easy for him that when they don’t, he tunes out.  And then he plays catch up.  He will go on information overload and seem to forget everything all at once.  Because his brain suddenly turned to mush, simple things like getting ready in the morning was suddenly a huge ordeal.  He forgot to put on his shoes.  He couldn’t remember where his backpack was.  He didn’t remember to brush his teeth.  He forgot all about breakfast.  And I know it was the same at school.  He’d cry in the classroom, frustrated because he was completely lost even though he knew this stuff.  And in turn, his teacher was frustrated with him because she couldn’t stop teaching everyone else in the classroom to assess his needs.  And while I truly believe that the teacher did the best she could, it was mainly time that was necessary to catch him up to speed.  And almost overnight, he did.  And he actually improved so much that his teacher told me in confidence that he was one of the brightest boys in the class.  But there was one area that he could never quite get a handle on.

Handwriting.

Remember when I wrote about that awhile ago?  Well, this is still a work in progress.  And I have worked with my son non-stop on this subject.  And together, we have practiced taking time to form each letter one at a time.  And he has learned that it is faster to do it right the first time rather than to have to do it over at lunch when his teacher deemed it unacceptable.

But his teacher’s idea of improvement and my idea of improvement are two very different things.  And this has been a very tough silent conflict between us.  I say silent because I have not spoken up to her about my resentment that every paper he brings home has MESSY written on it in bold red pen, even when it is a vast improvement to the work he used to do.  She even regarded his artwork that way, a fact I hid from him so he wouldn’t know that the drawings he worked so painstakingly hard at were being viewed as anything but art. 

There is a reason, albeit petty, that I have not said anything. 

In the beginning of the school year he was getting referral after referral, one right after the other.  And the reasoning behind the referrals was so minor that I couldn’t even believe I was being told about them.  He was dancing in line.  He was talking to his neighbor.  He forgot his homework again.  He kicked a ball after the bell rang.  And at least twice a week I was getting little pink slips of paper telling me about his “bad” behavior.  And he was getting the message loud and clear.

He was a bad kid.

If you label a kid “bad”, they will give up and act bad.  Why be good when everyone already thinks you are bad?  My son even voiced this when I obediently asked him why he did such and such behavior that was being sent home to me.  He’d shrug his shoulders and say, “I’m just a bad kid.”

Now, don’t get me wrong.  My son can be an irritating little sweetheart.  He will throw a tantrum over getting his video games or skateboard taken away.  He will cry when told that we need to go to the store or that he needs to clean his room.  Because of him, the words “idiot”, “stupid” and “hate” have been banned from our house when talking about his sister.  The other day he ignored his father 27 times (my ex actually counted to see how long it would take!) over one request to clean up his things.  He will use our house as his personal trash receptacle, throwing anything he is done using on the floor for me to clean up.  He will sing songs with potty words, act goofy when you need him to be serious, and he will bounce a ball repeatedly on the wall until you swear the pounding is coming from inside your head.

But he also is one of the kindest hearted kids I know.  When I have to watch a toddler girl at our house, he complains beforehand, yet he will play “Littlest Pet Shop” with her, or tea party, watch little kid shows with her, or just make faces to make her laugh – all this to entertain her even though I know he’d rather be outside with all his friends.  He can sit and pet a dog for hours.   Even the most stubborn animal is mysteriously drawn to him.  The meanest cat in my parents’ neighborhood lay next to him once, content in being loved by him.  He is a true animal whisperer.  He is known to give away part of his lunch to friends that forgot theirs.  He pays attention to the news, and worries when he reads stories about war or about children who have died.   He thinks often of Bobby Kirby, remembering his name and how sad that his life was cut short, and worries about how his family is doing, and worries about his own mortality – and mine. 

He is not a bad kid.  He is a good kid.  And I want him to know that every single day.  And I wanted his teacher to know that too.  I wrote her a long 6 page letter about who he was, what makes him up, the struggles he has gone through in his young life, and the easiest way to reach him.  And in turn, his teacher wrote me a letter back, thanking me for letting her know all of that, and to thank me in advance for supporting her in her teaching.  In short, she was letting me know that this was her classroom and it would be better if I just let her be in charge.

The teacher and I butted heads a few times after that.  Each time I would send her a note, and each time she would very nicely remind me of her need for parents to support her.  The referrals got less, but they never stopped.  And my son stopped telling me about recesses he spent on the bench or in the office redoing his homework, only because it got to be “normal” for him.  Switching classes at this point wasn’t really an option.  I truly felt that this teacher was a good teacher, but was more beneficial for students that followed direction all the time – students unlike my son. 

So back to my reason – I stopped speaking up because I wasn’t being heard anyways.  Besides, the school year was coming to a close.  But the biggest reason?  I was afraid that I didn’t have any reason to stand on for complaining, that I was becoming one of those parents.  You know the ones, the parents who believe their child is a perfect little angel.  Meanwhile, he is just outside beating the crap out of the neighbor kid.  I had a hard time gauging who was giving me the correct information.  Was it my son, the one who was complaining about the teacher who hated him, the teacher who was deeming all of his work, even the improved work, as unacceptable through recesses in the office and classwork with bold red labels written all over them?  Or was it the teacher with the kind face and gentle voice who spoke about my son as a treasure who was capable of so much more than he was producing?  I knew I was biased in my thinking.  And when it came down to it, I didn’t even know which fight I was fighting.

Today is the last day of school, and I bought each of the kids a simple white Thank You card to write a note to their teachers and give it to her with a bouquet of tulips.  My daughter wrote a long note telling her teacher how much this year meant to her, and how much she’d miss her over the summer.  My son wrote “Thank you for being my teacher” in purple marker.  And that’s all.  But on the outside he decorated the plainness of the card by drawing a huge mass of squiggles and lines all over the front. 

Beyond everything, the handwriting thing has been the one subject that has haunted me.  Just days ago he had a spelling test marked with 4 wrong, not because anything was spelled wrong (it was all correct), but because two letters touched on one of the words, another word had a floating letter, and two others had letters that dipped slightly below the line.  And while the words MESSY were scrawled across the top of the paper, the spelling test was in his neatest handwriting he could muster.

And in my rush, and with the lectures of neatness in my head, I got mad at him for “ruining” the card.

In short, I failed.

I kept quiet on the first half of the drive to school, but he interrupted the self grounding I had placed myself under.

“I’m sorry I ruined the card, Mom.  Do you think we can go buy another so I can make a new one?” he asked.

“No honey,” I told him.  “You didn’t ruin the card.  The truth is, it looks so much better this way because you made it your own by creating it into an original piece of art.  I’m sorry I snapped.”

“I just wanted to color it because the white was so boring,” he explained.

I’m not really sure what the lesson in this was.  Labels we place on children, making them into something they wouldn’t be otherwise?  How we view our children vs. how others view our children?   How many ways we screw up as parents?  The fine line in how your child is being raised when you’re not the only one guiding him?  Or maybe the lesson I am still struggling with on where my jurisdiction ends and the teacher’s begins, and if there can be a happy medium where mine NEVER ends.  Or maybe that I should have fought harder for what I believed in for the sake of my child. Or maybe even the lesson that I am wrong in my assessments on how everything went down this year and failed to see how much GOOD was done for my child. 

At any rate, the school year is over.  There are 3 whole months for my kids to forget everything they learned in the school year, and for us to start over with a clean slate next September.  And thank goodness for that.