I’ve been thinking about allowing my son to do something I wasn’t sure I would be comfortable with five months ago.
Five months ago EVERYTHING changed.
At the beginning of the school year after we moved to different school boundaries, my husband, son and his father decided after much thought and consideration to transfer James from an academically challenging public charter school (they teach a year ahead in curriculum and 70% is a FAILING grade!)to the local middle school.
While I truly love the school, think it is valuable and a life-saver for many and like it much better for my younger son, James was MISERABLE. Many of the teachers did not like him (some did), he was picked on, had few, if any, friends and he failed at least one subject every term despite sincere effort from us both and didn’t really like many of his classes. He struggled a lot. I cop to my part in it by not being the most organized, studious, consistent parent, but I tried, ok? I was the freaking PTA President and built a good deal of that organization for 3 years and my son struggled and struggled. I felt a lot of shame and failure of my own. I don’t think I had one good parent/teacher conference and parent accountability at that school is HIGH.
We were both pretty miserable.
We finally made the decision to let him transfer.
Because he was born 4 days from the deadline and because I had always regretted the decision to start him in school instead of holding him back a year, the deal was that he begin at the school as a sixth grader instead of a 7th grader.
I was very nervous.
It has worked out so much better than I ever expected.
My son gets all A’s and B’s instead of failing something every term. He has a study/homework period so he very rarely comes home with homework vs. the two to three hours we were spending before. His teachers all like him, I had my first ever completely positive parent teacher conference for him and he is finding classes and people that he clicks with and is comfortable around. This tends to happen when you go from having 30 in your grade to 350.
He has struggles with some of the kids and has had some issues, but it IS middle school, which goes down in a lot of people’s life journals as “The Cesspool Years”.
In short: it has worked out better than I ever could have hoped for.
The thing I was NOT expecting?
His growth in the responsibility arena.
Before we moved him we lived next door to the school and had trouble getting him to school on time. LOTS OF THIS IS MY FAULT AS A PARENT. I am neither a morning person nor organized. I freely admit this and will keep working on it until the day I die.
However, lots of it was him and his inability to go 30 seconds without his focus shifting. He was 11 and if I didn’t monitor everything, he would fall into some black hole of oblivion. We really tried stepping back and letting the natural consequences come to him, but that really sucked as it seems that parents are graded in school almost as much as the children attending (Which is a rant for another day.)
I was really beginning to despair.
I also really worried about what changing him to another school would be like. We live too far to walk but not far enough for him to be on a school bus. I have very difficult pregnancies. VERY. I did not think I could make the commitment to drive him every morning. So, I made him a deal. He had to ride his bike and I would drive him on days it was too icky outside to do so.
He had exactly 2 days of biking and decided, “NO WAY, JOSE” to THAT.
So, do you know what he did?
He figured out our free bus system, which routes he had to take, what friends and classmates used those routes and for all but 2 days since school started, he has set his alarm, gotten up, dressed, hygiened (well, as much as ANY 12-year-old boy is apt to do), prepared his breakfast, packed himself up and has arrived at school ON TIME WITHOUT ONE WORD FROM ME.
He is usually out the door before I am even out of freaking bed.
He also figured out which line to take to get directly from school to his dad’s office on days they have visitation. (I need to stress that the local buses are PACKED with middle school kids. It’s basically a second school bus in the mornings and afternoons. He also just got a cell phone so he can always stay in contact with me in case of trouble.)
It isn’t just that. He has become a lot more responsible in general. He was always a respectful kid, but now he isn’t just respectful, he’s helpful. He goes out of his way to get what I ask done and then ask if I need anything else.
Don’t get me wrong, he is so not perfect and we still have struggles and worries, but when I think about the change from September to now, my jaw is on the floor.
What a little sense of succeeding can DO for a kid, huh?
So, now that I have puffed up my chest and done the bragging, proud parent thing, I have a question for you.
James is 12.
He has gotten a taste of responsibility and really likes it and wants to expand what he is allowed to do. The thing that has me floored is WHAT and HOW he wants to do this.
James is an unusual kid.
Not surprising as he is MY kid. I like it, actually. I want to encourage him in things he loves. Art, theater, etc. He is also showing a keen and repeated interest in cooking, which I also love and am quite good at. For Christmas I bought him two of his very own cook books and some other kitchen supplies and things. He has taken two terms of Home Ec. and so I feel comfortable that he knows how to work everything and what to do in case of emergency so we have been allowing him to use the stove by himself even when we are not at home to make simple things. His level of potential and interest is such that I could see him going to culinary school one day.
SO THE QUESTION ALREADY!
James would like permission for me to let him cook dinner once or twice a week. Not only COOK dinner but SHOP for dinner.
On his own.
As in, without me taking him.
He wants me to teach him how to figure out what to buy, how to shop, how to pay for it, and then when he feels comfortable shopping and paying, he wants permission on the way home from school to get off the bus at the transit center (which is in the parking lot of a grocery store) buy the ingredients and then catch the next bus home and make dinner.
Breath.
I live in a small valley. It was ranked the safest metro area in the USA last year. (and it BARELY qualifies as a metro area and only because the ENTIRE valley barely reached the minimum population and that is because of the University here.) He has a cell phone on him. The store is steps from the buses and the line he would need runs every 10 minutes.
I don’t know.
I just don’t know.
I can be very overprotective because of Matthew dying. He’s my oldest kid and so I am trying to figure out a lot of this parenting stuff on him as guinea pig. Plus, times today are SO different from when I was his age. I nannied for my sister in the summers and age 12 and had been babysitting for years. I shopped at the grocery store by myself at that age. I cooked dinner at that age. I walked to school on a much busier street by myself. I could go all the freak over and stay out until dark in the summer as long as I was home when the street lights came on.
It just seems different somehow.
BUT he has been consistently amazing with trust and responsibility lately…
ARG.
I want to give responsibility but I also want to keep them safe. It was pretty tough to let him take the local bus the mile to school (and I am bracing myself for people being appalled at me for that decision). But is it really THAT big of a deal for him to get off of that bus and go 5 ft. into a store, pick up some chicken and come back on the bus?
Again, I just don’t know.
Anyone have any (respectfully stated) thoughts?
I would ESPECIALLY love to hear from those with kids in the same age or older. I would have said NO WAY IN HELL when James was 4, ya know? And also, I would really appreciate input from fellow Cache Valley people or those that know what it is like to live here. I can see this freaking someone from LA or New York totally out. Not that it SHOULDN’T, it’s just I would like to have opinions from people who know the area.
