Every year after the Christmas break is over & school starts back we have problems! Is this just my son or is this common, I bet it happens to a lot of our kids! It sucks & we knew it was going to suck but no matter how well you think you are prepared for something you know what? It still sucks!It's partially my fault for taking the first few weeks of "How was your day Jayden?" "GREAT!" he would say. Yeah…just gonna take that a face value! Yesterday I pushed to find out how things were really going & found out what I should have know, if you don't watch where you're going while driving the titanic you're going to hit an ice burg! Yeah… we hit an ice burg!
Piles of old papers stuffed in his desk that stood as high as his desk itself, I learned from his teacher. That poor woman who I can only imagine probably, after this year of school, talks in her sleep… "Jayden, what are you doing?….Jayden, why is all this work in your desk?… Jayden, why are you crying?… "
I have been trying all my tricks to get this under control this year before we head to middle school next year. (I don't even want to think about it!) We have now moved from taking things away like game time or TV time when he has done something wrong to taking most everything away & making him earn everything back through successful work & life habits. Will this work? Hell if I know but man, I sure hope so! My hope is that without the distractions of things that we normally allow a bit of throughout the week like TV, Netflix, & generally Zombie-ing out around the house & making him mostly stay in his happy place(his room) reading, working on some of his projects that are a bit more brain stimulating maybe we can get him to where he needs to be! We spent a long time yesterday talking & going over our new way of doing things yesterday. A lot of tears were shed, many "I wish you would get hit by a truck" looks were given, & I think we all understand each other now. We didn't get there without some rough patches of the conversation though. About mid way through out talk I asked Jayden "How does this all sound to you? How do you view this? You can tell me how it makes you feel & you're not going to get into trouble or offend anyone, just be honest & lets communicate." I got an answer that cut me like rusty prison shiv! "Honestly, it sounds like the start of a very horrible life" So yeah… at that point I wanted to say "I don't care about school, lets go out for ice cream & head to the science museum!" But I controlled myself & we talked a lot about responsibility, perspective, & the ripple effect that is set off by his actions.
Long day! Looooong day! Today he came home with a positive attitude, had all his work in his bag, & he got his snack then headed to his room to work some sort of invention out of circuits that I'm sure I will hear all about tomorrow.
