My son started fourth grade this year. Last year was the first year the students received actual letter grades rather than “satisfactory” or “needs improvement”, and fourth grade is the first year the students begin switching classrooms for various subjects. Unfortunately, when I arrived for the scheduled one-on-one meeting with his homeroom teacher just before school began in the middle of August, I was dismayed to learn that not only did I have only 15 minutes with this teacher but that I was not scheduled to meet either of my son’s other two instructors. Each of them has her own homeroom class and a gaggle of parents to meet with as well.
Had I been able to meet with each of his teachers, I would’ve warned them that my son has a tendency towards losing focus and staying disorganized. I might’ve been able to tell his math teacher that although my son is weak overall in school, he is weakest in math. Don’t get me wrong. Little Butterfly is very intelligent. He’s very creative, and sometimes I am floored by his ability to reason through a problem. Except in math, of course.
So back to the subject at hand. The phone rings this morning as my husband and I are getting ready to leave the house. It’s Mrs. MathTeacher, who I’ve never met. She apologizes for not calling me sooner than she has because the mid-nine-weeks period is ending, and she has to submit grades for progress reports. Uh oh, this doesn’t sound good, I think to myself. These progress reports will be going out next week, and she doesn’t want me to be shocked. She sighs. I mentally brace myself for what I’m about to hear, but somehow, I know I won’t be as shocked as she thinks. This won’t be the first time I’ve been told disappointing news about my son’s progress.
It turns out, Little Butterfly has turned in only four assignments out of about 20 or so that have been due since the beginning of the school year.
She also tells me that he has “lost” his assignment book, known as a “planner,” which he is required to bring home every night so a parent can sign it. I told her that I knew he didn’t have it. He had told me about a week ago that the last time he saw it, this math teacher had it. She quickly tells me that when she gets those planners from the students, she looks them over, writes whatever she’s going to write, then immediately hands them back to each student. Throughout this part of the conversation, I could sense that she was a bit uneasy. I can imagine that she’s been burned once or twice by overzealous parents whose Precious Angels can do no wrong. How many times has she had to deal with people who have blamed her for their children’s lack of effort?
I told her that my son had mentioned to me that he was sure that Mrs. MathTeacher was keeping his planner (for whatever reason…world domination, perhaps?), and that he blamed her for the unexplained disappearance. Then I reassured her that I am not one of those parents who is going to charge up to the school full of piss and vinegar demanding that she be nicer to my Precious Blameless Boy. I told her that I believed her when she said she didn’t have the book and mentioned that my son could’ve thrown it out the window of the schoolbus for all we know and was unwilling to admit that it was he who had been irresponsible with it.
Together, she and I devised a plan. She would provide him with a new planner which ordinarily costs $5.00 to replace. Despite my offer to pay for this replacement (from my son’s own saved cash from birthdays and whatnot), she insisted upon giving it to him. I thanked her with a promise that my son would pay for any additional planners that may be needed should he “lose” one again. She also offered to take care of the notation in his planner from now on whether there is a daily assignment or not. In ink. In her writing. With her signature attached.
So now at least one problem has been tentatively solved. I know now that he will have a planner to bring home with honest information written in it. It remains to be seen if he will actually make it home with the planner on a daily basis.
When he disembarks from the bus today, I will have a whole new set of problems, however. I will have to talk to him about how he’s lied to me since the beginning of the school year.
Each day, I ask him about his “homework situation” to which he has consistently replied, “I only have reading.” No math? No social studies? No spelling? “Nope. I finished it at school.” Well, can I see it? “No. I left it at school because I finished it.” I was never sure I believed him even though I was told during that first conference with his homeroom teacher that if the students finished their homework during school hours they wouldn’t have to bring it home. The reason I was always skeptical about his assertion that he had no homework is that he was also present at this conference and made aware (by listening to my conversation with the teacher) that he wouldn’t have to do homework if it was “finished” during school. Instead of actually doing the homework, he just tells me that he already finished it.
With nothing written in his planner–and sometimes no planner at all–my feeling that he was being dishonest was on shaky ground to begin with. I don’t want him to be in that discouraging situation where everything he says is doubted even though it is a bed he himself has made and in which he must lie (no pun intended). Since school started this year, I’ve tried to stay on top of making sure he brings home this planner, but each time I flipped through it to look at the current day, there’s been nothing written. I’ve signed it, however, and sent it back to school with him. If he failed to bring it home, he would be restricted in any number of ways. One time, his bedtime was pushed up. Another time, he wasn’t allowed to play outside with his friends.
I’m a parent who believes that children should be introduced to the concept of self-discipline from as early an age as they are mentally prepared for it. As such, I am more inclined to encourage my son to participate in his own improvement than to fall back on the extra efforts of already-overloaded teachers. While I appreciate his math teacher’s willingness to write down my son’s assignments in his planner, I wonder how this will help him learn to do it on his own. Left to his own devices, can I ever hope that he’ll learn this valuable lesson? I don’t think so. The fact is, he just doesn’t want to do the work. He sees homework as an obstacle to his busy recreational schedule. So he doesn’t go outside to play if he can’t get schoolwork done. Homework also keeps him from that all-important all-new episode of “Xiaolin Showdown” that he’s been “waiting all month to see, Mom!” So I take away the privilege of watching TV if he can’t get schoolwork done. I tell him, “it isn’t the homework that’s keeping you from your free time; it’s you that’s keeping yourself from your free time by not showing any effort.” In one ear and straight out the other.
Is there any way to make homework more exciting? Is repetitious spelling homework ever fun? Can his self-confidence ever be so great that math homework is a breeze? These are all the rhetorical questions that tumble around in my mind. And in about 45 minutes, the bus will arrive and deposit my Precious Angel back into my arms. I love him, but I’m pissed at him. There will most likely be tears–from him. There might even be a slammed door–again, from him. But today, I will keep my cool. I will put forth my best efforts not to raise my voice. He knows I received that phone call from his teacher; she told me he was sitting right there (in fact, she got our home number from him). He will be expecting the worst. He will climb down from that bus with his defenses set on high. But I don’t want him to be scared to make mistakes because of what I’ll do; I’d rather he have enough confidence in his mother’s love for him that he can admit to any mistake–and participate in the correction of those mistakes–without fear.
