Work On A Friday Afternoon
After taking vacation yesterday to have various & sundry MDs poke & examine me & Shorty (we also both had our heads x-rayed by teeth people...hello vacation Thursday!), I spent the end of the evening going over Shorty's report card with him. It was my homework in preparation for today's parent-teacher conference. As is to be expected from an intelligent but lazy 11 & 1/2 year old, he cowered in fear of my response to his report card. With 3 A's, 3 B's, & 3 C's, he didn't do poorly. The problem was he made an A- in reading (his best core subject) while not completing 80% of the homework. This was a pattern of behavior confirmed this morning by most of his teachers.
Initially I'd planned to go in to work this afternoon, but I made the mistake of asking said 11 and 1/2 year old why he didn't do his homework. "Because I didn't want to," he boldly replied. I almost blew a gasket. I did exactly what my parents did to me...I lectured him. I tried breaking down how he needed to develop self-discipline, ambition, and drive. I showed him how much he'd earned this quarter & compared it to what he could've earned if he'd put a little more effort into his work. I asked him what he planned to do with his earnings.
"Save it," he said. For a second I was happy he wasn't showing signs of the same financial retardation if father suffers from, but then I decided to probe deeper. "For what?" I naively asked. "For college, in case I don't get a scholarship," he smartly replied. I then broke down how the money I pay him for grades ($20 for an A, $15 for a B, nothing for a C, he owes me $10 for a D & doesn't even want to know what happens with an F) won't even come close to paying for tuition once he goes to college and asked him how he planned to pay for it. "I can work & go to school," he said, proud of his plan B. That's when I lost it. His father's been in & out of school since 1990 "working & going to school", and to hear my 11 & 1/2 year old spouting the same trifling plan instead of doing better now made my blood boil. I called my mother for advice.
"What do you do when your child touts an attitude like that...after you've moved from a warm & fun place to a cold & boring place & turned your life upside down to give 'em a better education? What do you do when you want to resign from your job as a parent?" I exclaimed to my mother.
"Well," she wisely said (wasn't she having to parent me in that moment), "you take a drink, sit down and try to figure out how to keep going." Let's just say I took her advice & didn't make it to work this afternoon...it was hard enough not wanting to smash his head in when he later asked about doing any number of fun things instead of studying, homework, or even practicing his Boy Scouts stuff. One thing's for sure, I'm either going to light a fire under him or set him on fire before I let him turn out like his father...but I'll be damned if I let him suck the life out of me like the Y chromasome he came from. Who ever said childbirth was the worst pain didn't have an intelligent but lazy 11 & 1/2 year old at home...
Initially I'd planned to go in to work this afternoon, but I made the mistake of asking said 11 and 1/2 year old why he didn't do his homework. "Because I didn't want to," he boldly replied. I almost blew a gasket. I did exactly what my parents did to me...I lectured him. I tried breaking down how he needed to develop self-discipline, ambition, and drive. I showed him how much he'd earned this quarter & compared it to what he could've earned if he'd put a little more effort into his work. I asked him what he planned to do with his earnings.
"Save it," he said. For a second I was happy he wasn't showing signs of the same financial retardation if father suffers from, but then I decided to probe deeper. "For what?" I naively asked. "For college, in case I don't get a scholarship," he smartly replied. I then broke down how the money I pay him for grades ($20 for an A, $15 for a B, nothing for a C, he owes me $10 for a D & doesn't even want to know what happens with an F) won't even come close to paying for tuition once he goes to college and asked him how he planned to pay for it. "I can work & go to school," he said, proud of his plan B. That's when I lost it. His father's been in & out of school since 1990 "working & going to school", and to hear my 11 & 1/2 year old spouting the same trifling plan instead of doing better now made my blood boil. I called my mother for advice.
"What do you do when your child touts an attitude like that...after you've moved from a warm & fun place to a cold & boring place & turned your life upside down to give 'em a better education? What do you do when you want to resign from your job as a parent?" I exclaimed to my mother.
"Well," she wisely said (wasn't she having to parent me in that moment), "you take a drink, sit down and try to figure out how to keep going." Let's just say I took her advice & didn't make it to work this afternoon...it was hard enough not wanting to smash his head in when he later asked about doing any number of fun things instead of studying, homework, or even practicing his Boy Scouts stuff. One thing's for sure, I'm either going to light a fire under him or set him on fire before I let him turn out like his father...but I'll be damned if I let him suck the life out of me like the Y chromasome he came from. Who ever said childbirth was the worst pain didn't have an intelligent but lazy 11 & 1/2 year old at home...
posted by N'j at 5:26 PM
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