Words of wisdom from an almost 6-year-old.
Posts tagged 海丰
I want to write something about the progress my son is making in karate but the baby is refusing to quietly stay in her bed and it’s my bedtime but I did try and I am proud of him.
Taken with instagram
Yes, its been 10 years and I still can’t take a picture without cutting the top of someone’s head off.
Karate (Taken with instagram)
I have a meeting in 2 weeks at the school with the school board psychologist to determine my son’s future. I am going to have a say in the decision, and I’m going to fight for him to go to grade one. The psychological & social impact of him repeating a year is too great. Whether you skip or repeat a year, that fact becomes permanently fused to your school identity, most especially with peers and even with teachers (sometimes subconsciously, sometimes not). Having a say in the decision is really giving me hope.
The extra work we are doing at home is beginning to take hold. His resistance is way down, and he’s starting to have fun doing the workbooks. Even math. Persistence pays off but omg it is not easy for the parent. Parenting is never easy, I know, but just this school stuff has taken at least 3 years off my life.
This is something I say to myself all the time, it is comforting though it doesn’t seem so right away (I am a pragmatist):
When things are bad, they will get better, but good times will not last, and things will get bad again, until they get better.
I had to carry him onto the bus morning in full sulk mode. I am officially a terrible mum. Should I mention that I won’t be there to pick him up at the school bus stop today? (His cousin will be there). I am actually considering emailing the picture of him and Iron man (posted below) to his teacher, so that he can show his friends, and possibly hate me less. But aren’t they supposed to hate us a little bit? Isn’t that how we know that we’re doing our jobs, i.e. not spoiling them? Crap happens. You have to deal with it. I’m not emailing the photo. Probably, well, we’ll see.
My son watched the news on Friday for the first time, staring in horror at the footage from Japan.
MS: What’s that? Is it coming here?
Me: No, No, it’s far away, in Japan. They had an earthquake and a tsunami.
MS: Godzilla! It’s Godzilla! He’s shooting fire from his mouth! (he’s referring to the houses that were caught up in the tsunami and on fire).
Me: No, Godzilla only exists in our imaginations.
MS: IT’S GODZILLLAAA!
But at least he’s watching the news.
It’s Sunday evening. Just putting supper on the table. My son tells me that he has a really bad headache. He’s never had a headache before.
“Where does it hurt?”
“Here.” He points to the back of his head.
The exact spot where the swing hit him earlier that day. He was back to himself two minutes after the accident, so I didn’t think anything of it. It’s been at least four hours, so maybe the headache has nothing to with it? Maybe it’s meningitis, he did have that fever most of last week. I grab Dr. Spock off the shelf. Probably not meningitis, but headaches after a head injury = emergency room visit. On a school night. In the pouring rain. Off we go, without an umbrella (I WAS PANICKING, OKAY?). Seventeen dollars for parking and an hour and a half later, he doesn’t have a concussion or anything wrong with him besides the headache, and we are on our way home. We go straight to bed once we’re home and my little boy sleeps soundly until 3 am when he wakes up because HIS FEVER CAME BACK BECAUSE OF THE BLOODY RAIN. But, there is nothing actually wrong with him and his fever is gone now.
What Panic?
My son came home from school with a “child in your son’s class has lice” letter. I checked for lice, found nothing, but I felt uneasy, anxious. Lice were walking all over my scalp. To make sure that lice didn’t show up here, I got my hair clippers out and shaved his head. He didn’t understand what “Can I shave your head?” means until the hair started to fall. He was upset for about 15 minutes, and the imaginary lice stopped crawling all over my scalp. He looks like a giant baby to me now, I guess because the last time we shaved his head he was two years old.
海丰 (Taken with instagram)
Finally!! If I were to give my son barbecue chips to eat, he would go from angel to nightmare in about 30 seconds. Same goes for McDonald’s ketchup. This info has been out there for a while, but then food companies are lobbying against having to produce food that doesn’t harm you.
His handwriting is still far from perfect, but so much better than before. More importantly, he isn’t frustrated like he used to be. A month ago, I couldn’t get him to write is name without him collapsing in a fit of screaming. Pretty amazing, I say.
Horrible cold with sinus headache all day. My son’s first Glee concert was tonight at another school, and I had to parallel park, kind of, right before a driveway so at least I could get out with some dignity. He was in the front row of performers, a first for him. I had a camera, but the stage was a blurry glowy oval in the middle of pitch black when I looked in the finder so I just watched the show. Oh, and my mum called when I was driving. Talking to her (or even seeing her on my call display) neither soothes nor comforts me. So thank you Advil for getting me through it and letting me enjoy the concert.
This was taken at the Cosmodome in Laval, QC. The best part was the planet exhibit which showed what the surface of each planet would look like. The gas giants’ lack of a surface (as we know it) got his attention and we tripled checked each planet to figure out precisely how each one was different. He really wanted to check out the Space Camp area, but I told him:
“But, you have to be nine.”
“Okay, so next week? Next week I’ll be nine?”
“No, in four years.”
“Oohh, next summer?”
“Not really.”
“Can I have a toy?”
My five-year-old son is having a lot of difficulty at school. His major problem is with fine motor skills; he has a lot of trouble drawing / writing the small movements that are necessary form letters. He can write one letter at a time, each letter taking up an entire A4 page, and to be perfectly honest, horribly unclear. His letters look like shaky circles and / or spirals that often descend into scribble scrabble. He is keenly aware that his handwriting is much worse than his classmates. He is acting out a lot at school because he is feeling so overwhelmed by the schoolwork. My husband and I both value education; I have been reading to my son since he was an infant. I started to teach him to read last year, but I didn’t press him too hard when he didn’t seem ready. I didn’t want to turn him off learning by giving him to much pressure. What he is learning now in kindergarten is not completely alien to him, I introduced him to a kindergarten workbook last winter. But he can’t handle it.
Last week, I had a parent / teacher interview. When I showed up, his teacher told me to meet her in the principal’s office. I got a little nervous. The principal was kinda nervous too. She asked me to read through his report card first. Then a guy I haven’t met comes in, introduces himself, sits down. He appears to be part of my meeting. Once the teacher arrives, we start discussing my son’s problems, etc… The good news is, even though he is difficult in class, he’s not considered hyperactive. They gave me some tips to help him at home, like using a small blackboard to practice writing, but he may have to repeat kindergarten. The guy I never met before is some kind of developmental psychologist for the school. His opinion seemed to be that my son, who is born in August, is simply too immature for kindergarten. I asked him if I had made a mistake sending my son to kindergarten this year, if I should have a waited a year. If I had waited a year, my son would have gone directly into first grade. He wouldn’t have been ready for that, either. Oh, and we have to wait until the end of second grade to firmly diagnose any learning disorders. According to Dr. Spock, it’s not unheard of for a child to repeat kindergarten or first grade, and the psychological damage is minimal. Obviously, I don’t want this for my son. I want everything to just start clicking: his fine motor skills, his ability to choose good friends (vs. friends that encourage him to get in trouble), his ability to calm himself down and handle frustration… But maybe he’s just a little bit too much like me? I have little patience nor do I handle frustration well.
For example: I received a birthday invitation for a kid in my son’s class. It had a date, a time, an address and an RSVP number. No explanation of what kind of party it was. Swimming? Space camp? But that’s not such a big deal, because you can confirm all those things when you RSVP. (except that she didn’t pick up nor return my call and I had to call her again the day before the party to find out what kind of party it was). What truly horrified me was the invitation itself: “When: Saterday, ….” It had been written in pencil, then re-traced with marker. SATERDAY. The fact that it was re-traced made it so much worse. The deliberateness. So, to be really mean: why is this kid, whose parents are barely literate, having no problems writing while my son still struggles?? And why do I keep relentlessly focusing on this Saterday incident in my mind? She’s an ignorant mum. That doesn’t mean she’s a bad person (she’s not), so get over it. No big deal. Move on. And yet, I remain judgmental, resentful and angry. And very worried about my little boy.
