I've noticed I have a really low tolerance for whining this year. That low tolerance makes me...whiny... So here goes, on my new track to being less whiny about my intolerances:
I met with some parents for 25 minutes after school today. Their child is in my remedial reading class but doesn't want to be there because he doesn't like to read. Despite his smiles and lively face in my classroom, he goes home and reportedly tells his parents things that I wouldn't want to hear. I try not to take this personally. I make every effort to find material that is interesting and/or life-relevant. After all, if I'm bored, how could I get reluctant readers interested in reading?
The parents make a suggestion about how I could incorporate regular classroom material into my curriculum. Having much flexibility, I tell them I'll talk with the regular reading teacher about this. I tell them this a few times in a "problem solved; thank you for coming!" tone of voice, but still they sit across the table.
At our last meeting together, they shook their heads and said they don't know what to do with their son. They read his assignments to him because, again, he "doesn't like to read." I asked them what will happen when he begins high school next fall, and they looked at me with big eyes.
After singing the praises of their child's untapped intelligence today, I brought up the shirt he wore on the first day of school: "Genius by birth, slacker by choice." I couldn't look at them after I said that, for fear that accusations would burn forth from my eyes. My parents would never have let me wear such a demoralizing shirt to school.
I am aghast at how many parents of middle schoolers shrug their shoulders and say, "We just don't know what to do with him!" I was a pain-in-the-butt teenager who scrubbed the toilet with her mother's toothbrush (told her three months later) and threw table knives down the hallway at her mother a few years after that. (None hit; get over it...) My parents most certainly did not dismiss my misbehaviors as, "Oh, that's just how she is!" There were consequences--physical, emotional, and mental. I learned that certain things are not acceptable. I'm still learning that there are better ways to do things. (I see the irony in learning later in life that procrastination is not the best M.O.) But if my parents had ignored that crappy teenage attitude?
So on to the non-whiny part. I was thinking, as I drove home, that hopefully, my electronic comments are not viewed as negative for the most part. I hope people read the optimism that really is inside me. I have this perverse drive to temper it with "reality" too frequently, but I'm working on that. So--how to apply that to this situation? I thought of these parents and how they're representative of so many parents in today's American society. What's the "good" spin on that? All I came up with is that it'll be amazing if I can show grace to them.
Going forth tomorrow, planning to be gracious--under the power of the One Who is most gracious to me... And that is amazing.
1 comment:
I am *so* with you. What is it with today's parents that let their kids listen to, let's say, Eminem, "to get their kids accustomed to the culture", what a crock, I say.
I am always convicted with the real belief that our children are like unset jello, where we start with that and set things inside the jello.
So, if I'm a parent and I set inside my childrens' watery jello: books that talk about 'boyfriends' and 'drugs'(let them read these at a young age?), tv shows that deal with sex and looks(at a young age aain), what do I expect my childrens' jello will look like when it IS set? It will look like whatever we set in there. What a shame. What a shame. We should cringe with what we allow our children to put into their jello, especially at the ages people are allowing them to do it).
THere are millions of parents out there not recognizing the facts that their children will only aim as high as their parents think they will become. "what do we do with him?" Well, you should have asked yourself that the day he ws born.
I agree completely with the t-shirt statement, what is it with parents these days allowing smut like that to be worn? What a terrible standard to set.
Sorry I'm blowing my top, but I"m right with you here sista!
~B
Post a Comment