High school is approaching! Not for me, gladly those days have come and gone by for little ol' me. (as fun as it was, wow, what a difficult time in life) The registration forms for Josh to attend high school along with his signed option sheet went back to school in his sweet little hands today. After a tearful and angst filled conversation.... Josh's courses for Grade nine have been selected.
The process has changed alot since my time but the basics are pretty much the same. There are course levels "Academic" and "Applied" that replaced the "Advanced" and "General" of the past system. Well, Josh was recommended to the Applied level for his English and Math and the Academic for the Science, Language and Geography courses. I thought that was fair, and was willing to ride along with the teachers recommendations here. Here came the friction!!!! Josh said that he should take the Applied straight through..... why? because he is STUPID.
I wanted to reach out and hold him for a week, hugging him and stroking that negative message away.... where did he EVER get that idea?????? I have never ever for a minute called any of my children stupid, dumb or anything close to that. He says that he is stupid because of his grades.(little does he realize yet... the difference between stupid and lazy)
I take this seriously though... he was close to tears when he proclaimed it. "I am stupid". And now just writing it, I too am close to tears. He does not even know how smart he really is. It hurts me to see that this is an image he has created of himself. His potential runs the risk of being locked if we do not change this soon. I told him he is as smart as I was in school... and that if he were to do homework, study for tests, complete assignments the difference in his grades would be remarkable. No matter how I have approached this, he has chosen all this time not to develop good study habits. This is where I start! Talking about choice. How he made the choices with his studies and then the result is not the best and he chooses again to believe something way off base about himself.... instead of choosing differently, he resigns himself. And sells himself so very short.
We finally agreed (begrudgingly) that he would try the recommended levels and work a little harder. After all of that I told him that his elective courses were up to him... Tech and Music, along with Gym round off his first year.
I remember now why I would not choose to go back to the teen years. Is there another time in our lives when we are beating ourselves up any more??
And if you are wondering... I did hold him in a long hug and tell him how I wanted him to see what a smart and capable person I saw... there is no way he would stay there for a week though.
My dreams for him are still so big, my love for him will take him to the point where he can meet his own dreams.
1 comment:
My goodness... I teared up reading this. If Josh only knew how much you have believed in him right from the start when he was a tiny little being; all of the hopes and dreams you had for this very wise little man, his head would swell, I am certain. If I could gather all of the courage up and give it to Josh, I would. It takes courage to enter a new realm like highschool and more importantly, it takes guts to endure those times in life when we enter unknown territory and feel like small little fish in a big, big ocean. It's incredibly overwhelming. Once Josh gets his feet wet, I am sure the confidence and security you have poured into him will come to the surface again. Love to both of you.
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