Stolen from my weekly update to my family… but still quite relevant. It’s just me bragging about his awards, so no need to read it if you already know how proud I am.
I cannot ignore that Shane graduated from the 8th grade. His promotion ceremony was absolutely glorious for me, because they kept calling his name for awards!
Shane got the Honor Roll award, for being on honor roll every semester during middle school. That alone is sufficient. He also got an award for participating in student court (just lucky). AND he got an award for earning ALL of his Social Service Learning (volunteer) hours for high school graduation before the completion of 7th grade. (Yes, 7th.)
Shane also got the Scholastic Achievement Award in Physical Education, which literally made me cry. It sounds like “just a P.E. award” – but it’s not. Each subject had a handful of kids recognized, and we all kinda expected him to be recognized for his consistent 100% grades (at the end of many quarters) in English. Only three people in the whole grade got recognized for their P.E. efforts – and Shane really deserved it. He was very serious about his physical education efforts, always ran (fast) when doing the mile, and always did well with new sports. So I just couldn’t be any prouder of that ol’ P.E. award!
But then he also got the Presidential Gold Award for Academic Excellence. This is the award for the really great grades – a GPA of 3.5 or above every quarter for his entire middle school career. I couldn’t believe it when they called Shane.
I guess I should have known about all of that before graduation, but quite honestly – I had no clue. I knew Shane did well in school, but I didn’t realize how well until I saw the smattering of people who stood up as often as he did. (Most of that smattering are his closest friends.)
Okay – so this “brief” mention of his middle school successes might be overboard. But if you can’t brag to family, who can you brag to? Shane gets so little recognition. I am thrilled that, on this day, he was recognized.
And this from a child whose vision processing disorder once made him incapable of reading a full sentence. It’s a miracle.
So… it’s summer.
I am not completely at a loss as to what to write in my blog, but I am feeling a little exhausted. Summer is the time when I get to spend a ton of time with my kids (whether they like it or not) and I don’t want to spend so much time on the computer, writing blogs.
I’ve made the executive decision – since it’s my blog – to post fewer entries. I am trying for twice weekly, instead of thrice, at least during the summer. This will be a tremendous relief to anyone who believes they need to read everything I write. For me, it’s a tremendous relief since I have less time to write.
We have already been on vacation to New York City, and stopped at an amusement park (for two days) on our way home. I’m playing softball three times a week to make up for all the times softball was rained out when the kids were in school. And while I’m not working, I am more exhausted now than I was when I was working.
Hope that’s okay with my readership…!
Remnants from the last weeks of school…. And this is just from science class.
Dear Teacher,
This is Dylan. I cannot find the labs online, so I will come in to get physical copies of it during class on Monday. I will stay after school with you to complete them, and then turn them in before I leave. Please let me know if this is not possible, if so we can arrange accordingly.
Dylan
Dylan,
Okay, thanks!
Teacher
Mom,
The teacher has a meeting after school. I will do the labs when she comes back from her meeting.
Dylan
Dylan,
I am at work. Do you need someone to pick you up?
Mom
Mom,
No, it’s only for like an hour. I’ll just hang out with my friends until her meeting is over.
Dylan
Dear Teacher,
Did Dylan ever turn in his labs and his study guide? I got a note from you that the study guide was in, but there is still no grade online. Thanks again!
Dylan’s mom
Dylan’s mom,
He finished his labs. I do not recall him turning in the study guide. I gave him an extra copy just in case. I have checked all of my material so I asked him to check his bag. Dylan is almost done with his science lab – he needs to label different minutiae on all ten parts to turn it in for full credit. I sent it home with him to finish.
Teacher
Dylan,
Did you finish your lab? Your teacher said she sent it home with you.
Mom
Mom,
I didn’t get it. I’ll go in early tomorrow to do it.
Dylan
Dylan,
Did you finish the lab this morning?
Mom
Mom,
The teacher wasn’t there. I’ll finish it after school.
Dylan
Dear Teacher,
Please tell me Dylan is done with everything for this year! He always thinks he’s caught up, but I never know. 🙂 Thank you!
Dylan’s mom
Dylan’s mom,
Just a heads up: the due date for the final project was today at the end of the school day, Dylan has not turned his in yet and there are only 20 minutes left in the school day. As long as he turns in the assignment, he should earn a B for the quarter.
Teacher
DYLAN,
WHERE ARE YOU?!? GET OFF THE BUS! GO BACK INTO THE SCHOOL AND FINISH YOUR SCIENCE PROJECT! IT WAS DUE BEFORE THE END OF THE DAY! YOU HAVE TO FINISH IT RIGHT NOW!
MOM
Mom,
I got off the bus. I am going back in now.
Dylan
Dear Dylan’s mom,
He turned it in, it looks amazing. 🙂 He got an A on it. 30/30!
Teacher
Dylan,
You got 100% on your project! Congratulations!
Mom
Mom,
Cool. Can I hang out with my friends?
Dylan
For the past few weeks, Shane has been reveling in the pleasures of being at the end of 8th grade. For two years, he’s watched the other 8th graders having privileges and fun activities that the 6th and 7th graders didn’t have.
Finally, this year, it was Shane’s turn.
First, he went to the 8th grade dance. “It was just like all the other dances,” he told me. “But without all the little kids running around.”
Then he went to King’s Dominion, an enormous amusement park, on a field trip exclusive to the 8th graders. Given Shane’s obsession with roller coasters and thrill rides, this was the event he’s most anticipated.
Unfortunately, it rained all day and his thrill-seeking friends ran off without him. “We got a few decent rides in,” he said. “The rain hit our face as we rode and a bunch of people didn’t want to do anything,” he said. “It was pretty fun, though.”
Two days ago, they had the last Morning Show of the year at school, run exclusively by 8th graders. Since Shane has been working on the Morning Show every day since the first week of 6th grade, he was quite excited about this.
“It was the best show ever!” Shane said. He told me about the anchors and their fantastic rapport. He told me about the music he played – every song, and why it was chosen. He told me about the jokes that were aired, and the one that he wrote that was – literally – very, very funny. Shane went on and on, more excited than I’ve seen him in ages.
I was so excited to see him so excited. He poured his heart into that show, day after day. Being director was tough for him, because he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But he stepped up and got the job done. So to have the final show be so successful mattered a great deal.
Today is Shane’s promotional ceremony – the 8th grade “graduation.” He will be marching across the stage in his sporty-yet-casual business attire, and he will likely earn some awards. Shane has had A’s and B’s throughout his entire middle school career, and he’s completed all of the social service learning hours required for high school graduation. Even his college transcript will start with a 3.75 GPA.
So he will definitely get some awards. I am so very proud of him!
And while I am so, so, so sure I will cry at the ceremony, because my baby will no longer be a baby, I know one thing for sure: I am thrilled that Shane is done with middle school.
Middle school can be heartless and cruel. It’s a time of self-discovery and friendship, sure, but most kids don’t have a clue about either of those things. Shane has somehow escaped intact, relatively unscathed, and is ready for high school for all the right reasons.
And I am ready for him to move forward, move up to the next level, and start developing his passions. Sad though I will be about the end of an era, it is also the beginning of a new one.
That’s the thought to which I will cling when I start to cry. And maybe I will think about that awesome Morning Show.
Good memories are good enough.
I have been writing this blog for three years, and I have had a lot of supportive comments, mostly from my dear family members who love me. At one point, I thought I might quit writing, because so few people read my blog – but everyone encouraged me to keep going.
One person, in particular, pointed out the blog’s usefulness as a memory saver – and suggested that I continue for my own sake, since it will give me some recollection and perspective later in life.
In fact, it does give me some perspective. It helps me see when I’ve been a good parent, and it helps me see when I’ve not done my best. It reminds me that there is always something to work on, as a parent, and that I can always improve.
I try to keep my blog posts focused on me – even when my kids are driving me crazy. I try to learn from my mistakes, and theirs. I do my best not to attack anyone, other than myself, since I am the only person who can do anything about me.
So when I got the following comment on my “About the Author” page, unrelated to any specific blog post, I was temporarily gutted.
It said:
“You really need to stop blaming everyone else for your incompetences as a parent.
Also, shouldn’t you think more about your child than to air all his dirty laundry online? He’s old enough to be embarrassed and understand what your doing.”
My children both support my blog, and are very careful to tell me when they don’t want something online – so I wasn’t even bothered by that part of the comment. It was the first line that got me:
“You really need to stop blaming everyone else for your incompetences as a parent.”
First, “incompetences” is not a word. But I understood the gist.
I need to stop blaming everyone else…? Who did I blame? I wish she’d put the comment on a specific post, so I would have had some idea.
I frequently admit my incompetencies – and in fact, I work on them daily. I don’t think I blame other people for my faults. I do my best not to blame other people. And every night, I look back on my day and think about what I could have done better.
I often have to get out of my bed, go find Dylan, and apologize. But not for my blog.
I admit, though, that one of my biggest faults is being judgmental – and I have already unfairly judged the person who wrote this comment. I have judged her based on the fact that she said her name was ‘Nancy,’ but her email says her name is ‘Tori.’ I have judged her to be very, very immature, even though I don’t know her age.
And I admit that I get a perverse pleasure in noticing that she doesn’t know how to spell “incompetencies.”
In addition, she has used the wrong form of “you’re” in her last sentence. She said, “… what your doing.”
If I were going to criticize someone so randomly and loudly on their website, I would make sure that I spelled everything right.
But I wouldn’t criticize someone so randomly and loudly on their website. It’s that whole Golden Rule thing.
Lately it seems like God is testing me, to see if I will continue blogging in spite of the nay-sayers around me.
Yes, God. I will.
The end of the year is always a bit crazy for Dylan. I don’t know how or why, and I certainly have tried everything humanly possible to change it, but Dylan is always behind in his school work.
He described his perception of school a few weeks ago in a way that made real sense to my non-ADHD mind. I thought it was very astute.
I am paraphrasing, of course, but Dylan said he had finally figured out the real problem. He described school work like this:
I sit down in class and they hand me a paper, so I start working. Then about halfway through finishing that paper, they hand me two more papers. I look up and everybody else is on their phone because they’re already done with the first paper. So now I have three papers, so I try to get some of the new papers done, even though I’m not done with the first one.
I work and work and I think I’m doing really well, until the bell rings and I realize that everybody else is done and I haven’t finished any of the three papers. So I shove them all into my binder to finish later, and I go to my next class.
In my next class, I suddenly remember that I didn’t finish the paper from yesterday, so I pull it out and try to finish it really quick before class starts. But then class starts and the teacher asks for the homework, which I also forgot, so I get a zero on the homework, even though I’m trying to finish it, and before I can even get yesterday’s classwork done, I get three more pages of work. So I start doing that, too.
And that’s how it goes all day, every day. By the time I’m caught up with all the work from yesterday, today’s class is over and I have all of that work left to do, plus homework. And if I have a quiz, I can’t finish the quiz in time and I have to go back at lunchtime and finish it. And that’s not even counting all the big projects. So I think I’m just really slow.
After all these years, this description is the first one that really made sense to me. Dylan admitted that it was hard for him to keep up.
Knowing one’s limitations is more than half the battle.
Hopefully, someday, knowing the problem will translate into his own search for a solution.
Personally, I am exhausted from offering so many, many solutions. But I really, really feel for him.
I would love to keep writing about my kids. In fact, I would love to be having those regular revelations that keep me writing about my kids.
But lately, I have not been having revelations about anything – except myself. My kids are living it, though, right along with me.
I have been learning about my autoimmune disorder, which has been attacking my thyroid for decades. I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t care, because I was too busy paying attention to my kids.
But I want my kids to have a mom. And I have this autoimmune thing. And it is likely to kill me if I don’t do something about it soon.
Ridiculous as it sounds now, it never occurred to me that an autoimmune disorder would kill me. Then I found out about the connection between the liver and the thyroid. Then I found books on how to reverse the disorder.
Then a dear friend died of a similar autoimmune disorder, and she was exactly my age.
So I’ve been learning what to do about it – mostly, what to eat – and trying to get ridiculous amounts of rest. I am supposed to sleep for 12 hours a day. I take a ton of very natural vitamins, and I am finding out what my body can, and can’t, tolerate.
I am doing well with food and vitamins. I am not doing well with rest. I can sleep when Shane goes to college.
Still, I am doing what I can. My kids are being subjected to smoothies every morning, because I have discovered that drinking a smoothie loaded with produce makes me feel like a million bucks.
They do not want to drink the smoothies, but they do.
I am not exercising. I am still playing softball, as long as it’s not raining, and I am in better health now than I was six months ago.
My kids are not exercising, either. P.E. class is a time when Shane spends most of his hour in line waiting for a turn to kick the ball.
For Dylan, it’s like a death sentence to sit still. For Shane, getting no exercise makes him despondent. The difference in all of us on a “regular” day and all of us with a shot of endorphins is enormous. It’s the difference between a rainy Sunday and a cool, sunny day at Disney World.
We desperately need to move. So I walk the dog, and I beg Shane to go with me. Neither of us wants to go, but we always feel better when we do.
My days, dull though they may seem, have been spectacular adventures of self-discovery. I have an addictive personality but, for some reason, I have never gotten addicted to anything healthy. I just don’t like healthy things.
But I can force down a smoothie every morning. I can walk more often. I can help my kids do the same.
So that’s where I am today. And that’s why I don’t feel like writing blogs. I guess, for now, I feel like I don’t have anything interesting to say.
But I will keep writing, because this is my record of my life. Sometimes life is just boring.
The day after Dylan’s AP test, I got an email from College Board.
“Please be advised that a decision has been made regarding your request for accommodations. A copy of the decision letter can be accessed at…”
Blah blah blah.
To me, it was like a cruel joke. Someone was waiting for Dylan to finish the test, waiting for the full impact of his suffering to take its toll.
After all of my phone calls to various College Board representatives, after emails to the principal and special ed coordinator, after their phone calls to College Board, nothing was done in time to get Dylan the computer he needed for the AP test. We had pushed so hard for so long, to no avail.
Sure, we were lucky. Dylan thinks he did fine without the computer. But did he? What will the person grading the test think, when s/he can’t read Dylan’s handwriting?
So knowing that he could have had those accommodations, if only the test had been offered two days later, was just a kick in the gut.
To my husband, though, it was a sign that his phone call to College Board had been effective.
“That rep must have gone right down that hall and asked for a rush on those accommodations!” he said gleefully. My husband truly believed that his phone call to College Board, made 24 hours before the test, had actually had the desired effect.
He didn’t go on and on about it. My husband just jumped to the conclusion that he’d done some good. That he’d made a difference. That his little chat with the customer service representative – probably the same customer service representative with whom we’d all chatted – was the phone call that made the difference.
When I got off the phone (for the third time), I had finally succumbed to the belief that nothing I could do or say would change anything at College Board. My personal impact on that organization was – and always will be – absolutely nothing.
I have no impact at all.
But my husband truly believed that after he got off the phone, the customer service representative stood up from his chair, walked down the hall, maybe even went into a different building, and found the person responsible for Dylan’s accommodations – then explained the urgent nature of the situation, causing the College Board to actually rush its decision.
And that’s why the accommodations came in so quickly, he thinks.
I am fascinated by the way he thinks. Optimism is not something I understand.
Still, in this case particularly, I’d rather be him.
On the school’s email list, I got the following email from another middle school parent:
I was hoping we had some word on the Summer School activities at the middle school this summer. Last year was the first time in the 13 years I have been in this area that we did not offer any summer courses for students. I sent my son to another middle school for Math Prep and to the community college for other classes. I sit on the PTA board and despite asking a lot, we have not gotten any information on how the middle school is handling sign up for this summer or if there will be classes. Does anyone have plans on sending their student to a different school who is offering Summer Courses?
My gut-level instinct was to write back with the following response:
The warm weather has just begun and you are already looking to the public school system to keep your child confined indoors for ANOTHER three months? Does your child really need to take more math preparation classes? Does he have incredibly special needs? Because if he doesn’t, you are dooming him to suffer for the entirety of summer when he should be outdoors swimming and riding bikes and playing in the sunshine!
Worse yet, your child is only a few short years away from leaving home and never coming back. He may or may not be headed to college – but he will definitely want to get away from you as soon as is humanly possible. Maybe you are afraid to leave him alone all day while you go off to work. Okay, I get that. But don’t you see the value in allowing him the freedom to enjoy SOME unsupervised time? Unless your child is a juvenile delinquent and can’t be trusted, WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO HIM? It’s like sending him to prison for the summer! Has it ever occurred to you to just hang out with him this summer instead?
It was my gut instinct to write back, to defend this child’s well-being, to do something – anything – to keep her from doing this awful thing to her own flesh and blood.
I wrote it, but I didn’t send it. Instead, I plunked it into a blog post and kept my mouth shut.
Parents are allowed to do whatever they think is best for their kids. I just totally disagree with this one.
Dear Dylan,
I had a vision for you today that is so far off, I can’t even believe I am about to tell you what I envisioned.
Since you have a full day off from school, and your SATs are on Saturday, I mistakenly thought you would use this time to prepare. I expected that you would wake up around 9:00 and, even without brushing your teeth, you would take a practice SAT. Then you would hop in the shower and eat quickly – protein and vitamins – and by 10:15, you’d practice another test. By noon, I envisioned, you would have taken three practice SATs and your brain would be fully prepared to conquer a test that could mean the difference between your dream college and … well, somewhere else.
Then, I thought, you’d have some leftover pizza for lunch and browse through that book I got for you about writing college essays. I imagined that you would do some of your college research about majors, auditions, and requirements to find out what will be required of you when you apply. Then, having been inspired by the book, you would work on your essay for your college applications – and maybe even write a couple of them.
My guess is that, in actuality, you are reading this at around noon, when you finally stumble out of your bed and head for the shower. You have built your entire day around hanging out with your friends instead.
Since I am working this morning, I will be picking up your friends on my way home. And then I will sit on my computer all day long, instead of going anywhere or doing anything. At 3:00, I will drive you and your friends to the plaza, where you will shop and eat and hang out. You will be free to do whatever you want because you have absolutely no responsibilities.
I am sure, by Saturday, you will somehow be magically prepared for the SAT. And I am sure that the six missing assignments I noticed online are actually “already done” and probably even “totally turned in,” as they always are – at least in your mind.
So enjoy your day hanging out with your friends. And the day I envisioned for you…? Well, that was obviously just a dream.
