Teaching children to advocate for themselves

I don't want to be handling my kids' stuff when they are adults, so when they enter middle school, I start handing over the responsibility keys to them.

This is a slow process and is somewhat dependent on the personality of the child. I can't do with G what I did with N. M has practically raised himself and is ahead of both his siblings despite being several years younger than each of them. 

Handing over the responsibility keys doesn't mean I throw the kids to the wolves. There are times when my kid doesn't know what's going on, and I need to insert myself into the process. 

But if it is a matter of questions about an assignment or something of that nature, I encourage my children to email their teachers themselves.

When they first learn to do this, I don't just say "Email your teacher" because they don't know what to say or how to say it or anything. They are still under the impression that adults know what they're doing. I try to gently disabuse them of this notion. 

Today, I had to help G advocate for himself.

He was assigned a group project yesterday (Friday) to be done and turned in on Tuesday. It is a long holiday weekend. 

Now I have issues with this assignment from the outset. An assignment over a holiday weekend is plain idiotic.

Also, group work at the start of the school year is usually dumb, especially if things aren't specifically laid out for kids like "Jane Doe is in charge of writing slide 1 and Bob Smith is in charge of slide 2."

(I know this from having assigned things without being very clear and specific about roles and responsibilities; I've learned from my own stupid mistakes.)

I asked G if he and his group had specific roles. He said no.

He said that two of his group mates weren't even at school on Friday and the other had to leave early to complete MAP testing. So G's group on Friday consisted of himself. 

G said he was just going to do the entire assignment, to which I responded, "No, you absolutely are not."

Maybe I'm just at the end of my rope with the pandemic "group assignment" in which some of us have done ALL the work to try to end it (vaccines, masks, social distancing, etc.) while others have done whatever the fuck they want, but I'm not about to agree to G doing an entire project so that the other four members of his group can get an A or a B or even a C on his back without contributing in the least. 

I tell students all.the.time when I sub that giving other people the answers is giving away their brain work for free. And it doesn't help the other person in any way, shape or form. 

So I watched as G wrote an email in which he explained the situation to his teacher and asked what she recommends he does. 

I'm hoping that he gets a reasonable answer back. If not, that's when I'll need to come into the picture and do some advocating.

If I develop a drinking problem, it's my middle child's fault

In my 15 years of mothering, I've gotten pretty good at feeling like I sorta know what I'm doing.
The kids have survived all these years, right?

But I have decided that getting my middle child through middle school is going to result in me developing a serious drinking problem.
I can't even begin to think what a nightmare getting through high school will be.
I think at some point, I will move into an apartment and leave my husband and G to their own devices, figuring out how to fix dinner together.
That's assuming the stress of raising this kid to near adulthood doesn't actually kill me.

I love my son, but he is an ass.
Some of his assness is because he is 12.
Some of his assness is because he has OCD/anxiety and takes his frustrations with these out on the people he knows will love him no matter what.
Some of his assness is simply his personality.
He is the trifecta of assness.

Tonight he did one question in an ELA packet.
One question took one hour, mostly because he was being an ass.

He wants to mansplain how to write open-response answers with text evidence like I have no freaking clue what I'm doing.
Like I haven't read and annotated this book--which I have.
Like I haven't taught this book to middle schoolers--which I have.

He asks for my help and then argues with me while I'm trying to help him.

It's like all the stuff I learned about parenting my daughter doesn't actually count because she and G could not be more different.
I didn't worry about her getting through middle school.
I didn't become one of "those moms" that get notifications from the grading portal all the time.
I didn't have to go to conferences on non-conference days to figure out why the actual heck my male child cannot seem to get his paper turned in when the kid doesn't even use his locker.

I am now all of those things, and I hate it. 

Homework is gonna kill me

I now understand the complete torture that is encouraging one's child to do her homework when she is clearly not.in.the.mood.  However, we had Girl Scouts tonight, so her homework had to get done.  

The homework assignment was pretty difficult--N had to use her spelling words to write a poem or story.  Now this may sound easy, but it really takes a considerable amount of imagination because you have to connect completely unrelated words in a coherent and mostly sensible series of paragraphs. This is an assignment I had my 6th graders do (which either means I was a completely awful, way-too-easy teacher or this is truly a difficult assignment for 2nd graders).  

Her words were 

Boys

Girls

Exaggerate

Foxes

Wolves

Happily

Babies

Glasses

Eggs

Sneakers

Adorable

Patches

Quizzes

Now I don't know if N's issue tonight was 1. she wasn't in the mood for homework, 2. she was frustrated by the assignment, or 3. a combination of both.  Or it could have been 4. being tired/getting sick/needing to poop, which are catch-all reasons for why kids often act like shitheads.  

I tried to help her by writing up an example for her, but I told her she could not use any of my sentences. It was just to help give her an idea of how she would write it.  I also gave her some suggestions of general topics she could write about that would include many of the aforementioned words.  For example, I said she could write about a forest or a zoo.

She chose quizzes as her topic and then proceeded to act like a turd because it was understandably hard to connect many of these words to the topic of quizzes.  

Bear in mind, while I was dealing with Miss Moodiness, I was also contending with the noise and mayhem of General Disarray and Captain Chaos who will not give us a minutes peace while I try to work on homework with N.  

She managed to write up a really good paragraph but at the expense of every strand of my nerves.  

Boys and girls take quizzes.  Some are about animals like foxes and wolves.  Children happily write down their answers.  Babies aren't allowdd in classrooms because they mess up stuff.  Some quizzes are about bird's eggs and they refer to science.  Some people have to wear glasses to help them learn.  Maybe somebody wears adorable and lucky sneakers to help them with the quiz.  People exaggerate when taking a reading quiz.  Some teachers give out patches for doing good and accurate word on their quizzes.  

After she wrote the sentence about "they refer to science," she asked, "What does refer mean?"  I told her she probably shouldn't use it if she doesn't know its meaning.  But she pressed me for what it means, and when I told her she decided she would still use it.  

Warms the English teacher in me....

N has to do a reading response journal entry 4 times a week, whereby she reads for 10 minutes and then writes the date, title of book, author and pages read (if a chapter book).  Two of those 4 weekly entries must be an extension.....a personal connection to the book, an opinion of a favorite or least favorite character, whether she learned a lesson from the story, etc.

It is such a thrill for me to discuss her reading with her and guide her as she writes her entries for a number of reasons.  First, it is just amazing and thrilling to listen to her read to me.  She is especially good at reading Junie B. Jones books because she puts a lot of pizazz into it---she sounds exactly as I imagine Junie B. would.  Secondly, I get a peek into her thought processes and personality by the questions she asks or the ideas she has about what she read.  Thirdly, I get a thrill like I did when I was in the classroom of helping a learner make a connection to her reading.

Tonight she read Chapter 1 from her Usborne The Wizard of Oz book.  She asked what we would do if a tornado came and took our house to the desert or somewhere else really far away.

She brought up what she learned at school to do during severe weather---cover her head, put her chest on her knees in a crouched position.  And we talked about what we do at home when there is severe weather.

She wrote:
Dorthy went under the bed insted of going to the celler because there was a cyclone.  I wold go in the basement.

On Nov 2, N read from Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valemtime.  We have read this book twice now, but N pointed out to me that it is spelled ValentiMe on the cover, not ValentiNe.  I had never noticed this before.  That day she wrote:
Im not like Junie B because I dont sit in the timeout chair and I dont yeell.  


I am such a nerd for many, many reasons but especially because I get such a kick out of helping my kid do her homework.