His Schedule is Changing.
Dylan is showing up for classes every day. It’s been almost a month of school, and he’s not a ball of anxiety – yet. Of course, while I have plenty of my own anxiety, I am not contributing to any of his school-related anxiety anymore.
He still forgets his work – but I am not responsible for that.
I occasionally check his grades, and can see that he’s missing work. Mostly, I don’t say anything at all.
Dylan forgets to turn in his assignments, then he figures out that something’s missing. He talks to his teacher, and sometimes his case manager, and he turns it in. Usually.
In other words, he is doing exactly what he has done for the past six years. The difference is, I am not in the middle of it anymore.
I am not forcing him to do anything, either. We have no requirements about studying and no requirements about sitting for an hour to “do” homework. Instead, he has consequences. He doesn’t have to study or do homework, but if he has anything less than a B in any class, he doesn’t work on weekdays.
So Dylan comes home from school and does nothing. He sits on the couch with his phone, or he sits upstairs on his bed with his iPad, or he goes in the back room and plays music.
In fact, I haven’t seen him do homework for longer than 10 minutes in the entire year. And that was a one-time occurrence. The day that he did his homework, I thought things had changed. I thought it was the beginning of Dylan being responsible for Dylan.
But no… It was just a fluke.
Due to a number of circumstances, most notably that his English teacher got sick, Dylan has just changed from Honors English to an AP English class.
His schedule is changing from mostly low-level classes and two Honors classes … to mostly low-level classes, two Honors classes, and one AP class.
Dylan says he is excited about the change. He thinks it is more appropriate for him. In fact, he’s mentioned several times that nearly all of his friends are taking IB classes – and I think he misses them.
He has also said that they are all overwhelmed with work – which they are, since many of them are taking a full college-level course load. Dylan does not miss the extra work.
So this is a compromise, I think.
One AP class could be enough to send Dylan right over the edge. Or it might be just the thing to make Dylan responsible for Dylan.
Only time will tell.