Don't you hate when you read a parenting book and the more you read, the more you realize it's just pointing out what you're doing wrong? That's happened to me at least 5 times so far in the 14 years that I've been a mom. Doh!
The most recent, before today, was over the summer when I read a book called How to Raise An Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kids for Success. It is a really great book. Jeff and I both read it and found it valuable. As a result of reading the book and buying into the points she made, I felt pretty confident in my decision this year to offload a lot of the responsibilities of school onto CJ even though I knew it may be hard for him at first and he may make a lot of mistakes.
While, I still feel really good about the decisions in general and plan to stick to them, I'm not seeing the motivation that I would like to see. I'm also seeing him slip into some old habits that are scaring me. He's in 8th grade and we have set our sights on his going to a private high school (read: essays have to be written, tests have to be taken and grades have to be good). He got a 64% on his first math quiz. Until then, he'd maintained an A average in his honors math class but now he's at a C. Yesterday, when starting the next unit, I was surprised (read: disappointed) that he didn't spend a lot of extra time with the material to make sure he had a better grasp of it so he'd be more prepared for the next quiz. Part of my "offloading" is to not check his homework unless he asks and not force him to study. It's killing me slowly lol.
Another part of my "offloading" is not to use the online system to maintain regular awareness of his grades. Until yesterday, I'd been doing a good job. Honestly, it was a little easier than it would have been because he was so happy about his grades that he was constantly showing them to me. But yesterday, in a moment of weakness, I checked his grades. Just like a suspicious girlfriend checking a boyfriend's phone, I wished I hadn't lol. What I found was that his science grade had ALSO gone from an A to a C. It's only the fourth week of school. I couldn't just leave it at that...I had to investigate what had gone wrong. Turns out, he just didn't turn his homework in last week and got a 0. Those darn 0s get you every time. I asked him about it and he said he forgot and through a series of unfortunate events, I was left frustrated and mad and feeling like he's never going to get it together.
Fast forward to about an hour ago. I spent this morning kinda sulking and feeling depressed because I'm back to worrying about his future (I should've never looked at the grades lol). I decided to find a new book on Teen Boys. After the How to Raise an Adult, I really felt like I didn't need another parenting book. I'm addicted!!!!! Anyway, so I found He's Not Lazy: Empowering Your Son to Believe in Himself. I've only listened to the book for like 20 mins - I think I got through the first chapter but it seems to be just what I needed.
So far, it seems that the book is intended to encourage us not to see our sons as lazy but to recognize when their actions stem from a desire to succeed but a failure to try for fear of success. In my current state of life, I just find this so hard to believe. I must be representative of most parents of teen boys because he addresses this almost as soon as he presents it. He asks his readers to do an exercise which should instigate the start of the paradigm shift that he's hoping we will achieve as well as to gather some empathy for the complicated life our teens are living. I'm gonna do the exercise and expose it to you, my imaginary readers, in the next post.
Whew! Is there any adult who doesn't need therapy from their upbringing? Parenting is hard lol.
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