02 September, 2009

10 y.o.'s woes of today

This afternoon I went to the gym and my husband collected the boys from school (I'm enjoying my husband's more flexible timetable this year!). By the time I arrived home, they were into homework. It was not until my husband was about to leave with our nearly 7 y.o. to collect bikes from the fix-it man (and to go to a catch-up swimming lesson) that I realised our 10 y.o. was not having a good day. My husband didn't really elaborate very well, so I was left to drag it out of an already on-the-way-to-becoming distraught son. In the end I sent him to his room until he could bring himself to articulate the problem/s. Here is an approximate list of his complaints:
  • Someone called him a name (approximating the part of your anatomy that you sit on).
  • His whole class has been given a 15 min detention for the misbehaviour of part of the class during music. He assures me it wasn't him, and I believe him because he cannot believe that he has to suffer the consequence of another's actions.
  • He tried to get access to the computers to do more research for a project, but was not allowed to go (I don't understand this).
  • He thought he had lots of information for the above project already, but his teacher said not.
  • He has another project due and some time in the near future (I couldn't get any dates out of him at all), but he had had it all confused with the previous project.
  • He still doesn't have many friends and really misses his previous school.
  • He was unable to have more than one conversation yesterday on the bus to a book week excursion. (This relates to the friends issue.)
It was all terribly emotional and difficult to sort out. I'm wondering - such is the life of mums with boys? Untangling it all and getting some progress on the above mentioned projects took quite some time. He assures me he will talk to his teacher about the first project above (rather than writing an email to his teacher, as I suggested). Settling into a new school takes a long time, for kids and parents. Little bits of information that others appear to possess, just seem unobtainable. If you are a praying person, please pray that he'll feel more settled soon. You can pray these projects will sort themselves out soon too.

1 comment:

Caroline said...

Hi Wendy,

He sounds a lot like my 13 y.o. was, three years ago, in regard to both the injustice of the punishment and the projects. He still struggles with these things, but is now able to cope with them much better.

I know we've never met, and I'm not even sure how I got onto your blog, but it has been really good and helpful to read it. Thank you.

Caroline