A week ago we had our first parent teacher meeting for the sixth grade school year. I always have a bit of anxiety around these meetings because I’m never sure what I’m going to hear, but I was going in with optimism since the school year had barely started.
Admittedly it did not start off uneventfully as we received email communication from a teacher within the first week about a long-standing issue with his talking in class. We addressed it and started anew. The next week we stopped in for a talk with his advisor who will help him navigate the year and this conversation was also mixed. He’s a good kid, a smart kid, but his emotions run high and he’s often in conflict with a few of his classmates. Deep breath. Start anew.
I’ve written on here about my ups and downs with parenting. He is an amazing kid. Smart and thoughtful. Has a strong sense of right and wrong and fully embraces our faith and treating others the way you want to be treated. He works hard and has shown unwavering dedication on his path for a Black belt in Taekwondo and continues working toward his second degree today. He makes me laugh nearly every day. But sometimes I cry.
He is persistent and argumentative. Strong-willed and extremely literal, which is the root of some of his peer interactions. We’ve seen a therapist for a couple of years to help guide him and us through these trying times. It’s been a roller coaster for sure and while I know we are not alone in these struggles, sometimes I just want to wave a white flag of defeat in the face of it all. I lose my patience. Sometimes I yell. I don’t like this about myself, but there it is.
So you can imagine the conference didn’t go so well because I’m not sure a blog post would be warranted if it had. Overall, we received an overwhelming number of positive comments but one was really hurtful and therefore took precedence above them all. And so like a new wound that covers over, I repeatedly returned to it in the past week to peel back the layers, making it fresh again with each examination. I have tried processing it from every angle to make sense of it. I talked to my husband, a friend and the head of the school. We received a note of apology for how the message was delivered from the teacher.
Now it’s time to move on. The only way I can think of doing that is through faith and prayer.
MC
I Am Writing 