You can probably already tell that I’m a complainer. Yep. I’m a big fat whiner. But in my defense, parenting two boys in 2010 is complex. I got a note from Middle School last Monday setting up Parent teacher Conferences for the end of the month and had an immediate anxiety attack. When your boys have learning disabilities and various degrees of advanced academic aptitudes, when they are boys of the ADHD variety with sensory integration issues irregardless of hard and fast diagnoses, when your boys can’t sit in their seats, avoid distraction, cease disruption, talking, singing, tossing, poking, bouncing, learning in a modern setting is tough. We all are pretty clear what that modern setting is: classroom, desks, indoors, cognitive tasks above kinesthetic ones (in even the best schools), and Reading, Writing and Computation priorities as needed for testing accountability.
So, note from school: anxiety attack. When you have my kids, every meeting and school change is another opportunity for the new teacher or school personnel--- or the six new teachers in Middle School (not including other school staff , coaches and music teachers, etc..)---to weigh in on how your kids measure up---or not. How they are too smart to get those mediocre grades. How they should put more effort into their work, take their time, edit more, organize better, avoid distraction, pay attention and, bottom –line, be well-behaved and quiet and still. Now, we attend to a GREAT public elementary school and a GREAT public middle school. Both are traditional at base with a very progressive, creative edge and a core of excellent staff and teachers who are constantly pushing the envelope to educate whole kids. But let’s face it, modern schools are under pressure to educate every kid from every circumstance, as well as feed and care for them while their parents work. It’s really not easy. Cognitive education is being pushed to earlier and earlier ages as kids are less and less disposed to grasp it from lack of full brain education. Full brain education requires exercise and nature in measure with appropriate social and cognitive tasks---but primarily it means using your body to grow your brain. This learning is ameliorated by enriching experiences like travel, cultural immersion and events including language, art and music, and sports, and most of all a connection to and a wide range of experiences in Nature.
My kids have parents who prioritize balance. We eat homemade nutritional food and pack healthy lunches. We make time for sports and exercise. We have good solid routines for down time, rest, homework, bedtimes. Both parents are available to our kids for homework, in volunteer capacities: chaperoning field trips, coaching sports, leading expeditions to in town or in nature with friends as time allows.. We limit social activities, we minimize major disruptions, we stay home a lot and cook dinner or just hang out, we travel to see family and for fun when there is time, we prioritize our family---but we can still barely manage. Our kids don’t get enough exercise, nature, rest or sleep. They have only minimal time with friends and even less with family who live two states away ---to the East and West. They have strict computer and television limitations, homework comes before all else with only structured outdoor exercise getting the edge. We tell them that if they can’t do their homework:: all duties obligations and responsibilities, there is nothing else. No clubs, sports, t.v., computer, friends, allowance, errands, etc. The point? We are exhausted ---just getting to school and back. Homework is stress. Structured sporting activity around homework is more stress. There is no time for anything else except a healthy dinner---on a good night..
Most of my parent teacher interaction of a professional nature has been painful. So you can imagine my distress at any note from school, parent-teacher conference notification or school-related telephone call. Your kid can’t hold it together. Your kid needs to slow down. Your kid is failing third grade. Your kid is failing Science. Your kid is not paying attention, bugging his neighbor, can’t stop eating—or folding paper airplanes, talking, moving around, throwing his pencil- in class. The message: DO SOMETHING. There’s the rub. I can chastise, be aware and consequence. I can remind, structure time, support. I can coordinate, communicate and repeat, repeat, repeat, but I cannot fix. I cannot make a moving kid still. I can’t make a hurried child slower or more patient. I can’t make a kid unexcited by school, happy about homework. I can’t fix my kids so they fit the modern school system.
It’s amazing how many adults want to weigh in when you have bright, tough, noticeable kids. These adults --and the world-- want you to parent them into submission. I’m here to tell you that on the heels of many more qualified parents than I am, I’ve tried it. We’ve tried it. Guess what? It doesn’t work. You can’t force another human being to do anything. Call it free will, call it a spiritual path, call me a bad parent (you’d be in good company), but they have to choose it for themselves. I can lead by example, make life and responsibilities joyful (sometimes), I can consequence poor choices, and set limits, but I can’t make a kid want to learn, exercise, eat healthfully or have a happy, productive life. I can only create a structure full of healthy boundaries and limits, loving encouragement and positive reinforcements added to small victories that are the openings to success.
For now I’m considering it a victory that my middle-schooler goes to horn lessons with relatively little complaining, that the transition to a new middle school has been devoid of drama, that we can fit in soccer, and that we can find an occasional peer tutor for large projects that could blast mom and dad’s energy resources. That is all good to me. I also take comfort that my 5th grader has a really nice male teacher who is challenging him, and classroom full of mostly really decent kids. I am also considering it a victory that we have one week left of Fall Baseball season and we’ve survived. Middle-school Parent Teacher Conferences are still two weeks away. Cross your fingers. Small Victories that provide the opening to success is my new motto. Do me a favor. Remind of this the next time I complain!
