I am pleased to be able to say that my son successfully survived his first full week of school in many, many long weeks. He is determined to make this semester go well.
Unfortunately, he did not do very well with working at home and he had to turn in his Independent Study work mostly uncompleted, earning himself some not very good grades – but, if he does well between now and the end of the year, he should be OK.
On Tuesday, Petaluma High School hosted an evening for eighth-graders and their parents to be introduced to the school and what the kids can expect for the coming year as high school freshmen. It is so hard for me to comprehend that my child will be in high school next fall! And it was rather overwhelming – for both of us. Lots to take in, but I am very impressed with all Petaluma High has to offer; it appears to be a very good school with lots of opportunities. I hope it will be an easier situation than junior high has been, not that the junior high isn’t a good school – I think it’s just a tough age – a time of transitions.
When I wrote about the problems with our schools in general – back when Dalton was feeling like he never wanted to go to school again – I was trying to understand the reasons why he felt that way and comparing it to how I used to feel about school myself. And all those things still apply, but by the same token I am relieved that he has decided to go back and stick it out. It might not be great, but it is what there is, and if he can do it, then it will hopefully build some character and skills that will benefit him.
But in thinking about what I wrote at that time, I realize that I was feeling anger. And I was not wanting to accept that my son’s problems were due to my inability to do what was necessary. I do the best I can, and there is a fine line between giving him the space to make his own decisions and attend to his own responsibilities and, as a parent, forcing decisions on him and dictating what he should do or not do. I am apparently not very adept at the latter – at least about some things.
But what I try to do is always to teach him and let him come to his decisions based on logic and good sense. And he does very well. But when it comes to actually doing what you do not want to do, I suppose I give him too much rope. But when I tell him not to procrastinate and indicate how he should plan his time regarding schoolwork, if he does not comply, I get frustrated with him – and mainly just don’t understand why his sense of logic doesn’t make him do what he needs to – without knowing what else to do about it. I do not know how to force him to do school work. I do know that he takes it seriously enough to get very upset with himself when he doesn’t do what he needs to do – but I can’t seem to get him to do what it takes to save himself that upset. He often seems to need to learn things the hard way for some reason. Is that inherent in him? Or because of my parenting?
I tend to have a hard time even articulating these things. In my parenting of my son I tend to rely almost completely on intuition and common sense – and my sense of knowing who my son is, how he thinks and how he feels. I rely on my senses about things. And in many ways I think it serves me – and my son – pretty well.
But according to other people – my sister for instance – he would not need to ever have these problems if I could somehow make him do certain things. And this, I for some reason, cannot grasp. How does one MAKE anyone do anything, and WHY would one even want to try? I believe that you need to impart the reasons for something and try to instill the desire or at least the cooperation. And this is pretty much how I raise my son. We do have arguments, he does get defiant sometimes – but the older he gets, the less problems we seem to have. He is very smart and he is very intuitive and perceptive and sensitive. He wants to do what he does because he understands why it is necessary, even if he doesn’t like it. But there are times he simply is unable to motivate himself even if he knows better and this is where I need to help and have been unsuccessful.
But have I been unsuccessful? Motivating ourselves to do something unpleasant is something most of us probably struggle with all our lives. If we really need to do something, then chances are we will do it – and so will my son, in some fashion – or accept the consequences.
How does it benefit a kid if all that he knows is doing what his parents tell him? Then he grows up and doesn’t have to obey his parents anymore – and knows nothing, understands nothing, and has built no character other than to do what someone tells him to do. Is this a good thing? I think not.
Life is, after all, about learning. We have been learning that when Dalton doesn’t miss school and get behind, he does fine. He does his homework without my nagging too terribly much – and he gets good grades. But we have learned that when he gets behind, it is nearly impossible to motivate him to work hard enough to catch it up. So we just need to make sure he does not get behind. And hopefully he will eventually learn how to manage when his responsibilities get bigger and bigger, without getting so overwhelmed and anxious that it renders him unable to do what he needs to do.
If I am missing something here, then hopefully I will learn what that is. In the meantime, I stand behind my parenting and my beliefs. And I do the best that I know how to do.
My sister decided that in order to make sure Dalton started the semester out right, we would start again turning off the Internet at a certain time at night. And I think that serves its purpose at times – although during school nights I haven’t found it to be particularly necessary – but whatever. A funny thing – shortly after my sister started turning the Internet off, she forwarded me an email with this picture:
Rather appropriate, right?
I thought it was a hoot so I decided to email it to my son. But interestingly, instead of what one would expect from a kid in such circumstances, his reaction was to comment on how it is that people take art and create silly things like this. He said he likes the artwork and thinks he’s seen more by the artist. I thought that was rather a mature reaction! No comment about the Internet being shut off at all. Interesting. That’s my son!
As for the artist who did this original piece – I researched but could not find who it might be, but there is a reference to the possibility that it was done by artist Stephen Gammell. I don’t know whether he did, in fact, do this one or not – but his work is pretty trippy!