Bringing Up Boys - it's not a 100m dash it's a marathon!

They're brilliant - aren't they?

It's dreadful isn't it when you have a higher sense of the worthiness of your child than the teachers and you don't even believe that you're really that biased. 

Of course you are aware he's a bubbly personality who's always on the move  but compared to your eldest he's a positive genius. Surely he HAS to be doing well?

But doing well is a relative issue.

As I said my youngest is a genius compared to his brother but compared to the other hot house flowers...he, as I found out, and by extension I, am sadly wanting.

It was all supposed to be so good. 

"Right Mrs B, Bog Boy!" she says it so brightly that I am totalling unprepared for the first cut. "Not the brightest chap, is he"

What? Well of course he is...he's a genius. He's always telling me so.

She pats my knee sympathetically and smiles. "He's not going to be top of the class..."

Oh, really, OK then...

"Reading - he is a bit behind and as for his writing..."

His writing is great it's already better than his brother's writing and Bog Boy is left handed

"His writing development is slow but it is better than The Boy's - I know I used to take him for extra English." she smiles again.

Oh Brilliant! Get two with one blow why don't you! I really don't like her smile...

"He hasn't really grasped punctuation and although he can be helped with capital letters, his spelling really lets him down."

Oh good grief! My hackles are up and I try to rally but that is my fatal mistake...

"I don't  really concentrate on his spellings as such, " I say  in what I think sounds like worldly authority. "I rather have my hands full with my eldest and trying to help him. I don't feel Bog Boy needs to be rushed at it so, as yet." 

But I am up against a master - I forget she's already retired twice...

"What a refreshing attitude," she chirrups, smiling again; "and you're quite right a child should be a child for as long as possible, it goes so quickly...."

My hackles are smoothed and I soften up.

"Perhaps you could bring mathematics into his play life with measuring, and weights and money" she says it as she would to a small defiant child and I swear she's about to pat me on the head as well.

Oh god I walked onto that one didn't I?

I begin to panic and hyperventilate and I feel suddenly very uncomfortable on the small blue plastic chair. She, of course, is sitting on a normal chair bolstering her position of ultimate superiority. I fluster.

"But he'll be OK to go into Year 3 won't he?"

"Yes, yes," I am told, "he'll be fine just not up there with the top of the class!" she says with another sympathetic pat on my knee.

And before I know it I am dismissed.

I leave in a daze and it's not until I am halfway home that I start to get enough life in me to get angry. "Right!" I think, "that's it. I'll show her, my kids are brilliant!"

I should have metaphorically ripped her to shreds.

"HOW DARE SHE!!! How dare she say that crap to me, how dare she pronounce via her crystal ball that my kids are not going to make it. I am determined to push my kids to the utmost throughout the holidays so that they are perfect in all their lessons when the new year academic year begins."

My dander is up. I know my kids can do it...
"Right no TV, no sweeties, no no no anything nice until work is done. Every Day! Two hours a day..

well maybe 45 minutes, children cannot concentrate for more than 45 minutes I remembered from somwehre. Music lessons. Extra sports coaching. Tutor?"

It's all beginning to sound very expensive and very time consuming.

I try not to think about the essay I saw that one of Bog Boy's chums had written and which I espied when I was waiting in the Year 2 Classroom. A whole page about a boy going on holiday with proper punctuation - even speech marks! And all joined up and it made sense.

"Oh heck! Even my eldest cannot do that!!!"

By the time I reach home all of 20 minutes later I am a gibbering wreck as I look with clear eye at the enormity of what I am trying to achieve.

And then I remember what they said about Winston Churchill being backward and at the bottom of the class - and he got the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 as well as being Prime Minister! (oh they don't make them like they used to, do they!)

One has to hold firm and not panic the bringing up of boys is not a 100m dash, it is rather a marathon - just one I wish I didn't have to run too!

Bringing Up Boys - Sending me stark staring bonkers...

School Bags

Dear God give me strength!

What IS it with boys?

BOTH of them came home today – the biggest prep day of the week – without the wherewithal to complete their homework. In spite of me asking not once, not twice but three times before we left the school had they got everything in order to do prep this evening.

“Oh yes mummy!” I was assured by one, followed by the other groaning “Yes Mum” and rolling his eyes as if I was some kind of dimwit.

And then, after our half-an-hour drive back home, they open up their book bags - or in the case of Bog Boy realise that they’ve actually left the book bag outside at school - and find that the one vital bit they need to complete their prep is still in their classroom.

I think they are doing it purposefully to send me stark staring bonkers. I can’t see any other benefit. Surely they don’t want me screeching like a banshee all the time. It can’t be normal, can it? To be always forgetting things and losing things?

I just don’t understand it.

How the heck am I going to get them to wake up? To come to life? To be alert? To get with the programme?

I scare myself silly thinking about their futures. Life is competitive and competition seems to be starting earlier and earlier these days.

In evolutionary terms, if it was left to my boys, we’d be extinct...

Bringing up boys: the problem with teachers is….

Thank God! It’s the end of term, or as near as dammit for me. No more having to deal with The Boy’s form teacher.

As far as I am concerned she has been a total nightmare. You know there are just some people you are never going to meet eye to eye with, well for me she was one and right from the start.

The Boy is in Year 4 and has issues as I call them. He’s clumsy, cack handed, behind, forgetful, easily distracted and prone to being bolshie for no apparent reason. He’s also keen to please, enthusiastic, loves getting stuck in, helpful, kind and loving. In effect a boy.

But throughout the year he’s not been good enough, he still, at the end of the summer term, cannot get his act together – as far as his teacher is concerned and do you know what I don’t actually believe that it is my son’s fault at all. In fact dare I say it I lay the blame at his teacher’s feet.

For the methods she’s used over the past year quite clearly have not worked in The Boy’s case, and I don’t understand why she cannot see this. I have been into numerous meetings with her and explained the problems or tried to at least and I get the feeling that she just wasn’t listening or couldn’t be bothered.

In the Autumn term I was told that he expressed the wrong attitude to learning, that he slumped about at his desk, wouldn’t follow directions and was frankly too babyish. I listened carefully and following his appalling effort grades duly bollocked him and told him to get a grip. But I wasn’t happy and clearly nor was The Boy.

He did try, he really tried terribly hard and the second half of term with me helping him do homework we got through to the end.

In the spring term I was called in again and basically told he same things, his effort grades were still appalling and I felt that his teacher wasn’t being fair. But I went along with her plan that he fixed a contract with the school. However when the contract was written out for The Boy the teachers wouldn’t listen to me when I said I thought it was very complicated, that the language used wasn’t simple enough, and that I felt he was going along with it just to please them without really understanding.

But hey I am only his mother and I was totally overruled.

I shook my head and felt that there was no way I could carry this one through it was far too damaging and as one would expect the contract fell by the wayside. I realised I had to investigate further.

So I took The Boy to test if he had dyslexia. There were strong indications that he did have it. I went back to his form teacher. It was agreed that he could have extra help but by the summer term they withdrew the help saying I had not done a proper Educational Psychologist report despite the fact that we were awaiting one.

So the poor lad had to do his exams without any help at all and as expected did dismally.

Finally we got the Educational Psychologist report and guess what – oh only that everything I had said about my son was right. 

I am at a fee paying school. I am lucky that I have enough money to force the issue in terms of getting my son tested without having to wait in a queue or argue the toss just to get a test done in the first place. But is was still bad enough for me. 

I couldn't believe how his form tecaher with all her experience and expertise couldn't be flexible enough to realise what was up with my son. It wasn't as if she had a massive class to cope with. Only 16 of them for heaven's sakes!

Throughout the year I was made to feel stupid and inferior for battling for my son, for taking his side. I was told that children make up all sorts of stories that they will say anything in order to get themsleves out of trouble.

Errr yes as a Mother I know this; I am not blind to the fact that my boys will push the issue, will try to squirm out of a tricky situation. I know this but I also know how to investigate further to get at what is really going on because I keep asking questions. I don't take anyhthing at face value; no mother of boys can!

So the real problem with teachers is that they forget that just sometimes mothers know our boys way better than their teachers, we know when something is not quite right. Perhaps teachers should listen more and remember that just sometimes MOTHER KNOWS BEST!

Bringing up boys - strange noises from his bedroom....

There are peculiar murbling noises coming from my eldest son’s bedroom punctuated by barks of laughter and strange snorts.

I can hear them from the kitchen.

Of course I shouldn’t be hearing anything from the kitchen at all as he should be fast asleep by now.

I should shoot upstairs and demand to know what is going on and tell him to turn his light off and go to sleep immediately as I know he’ll be exhausted in the morning.

Yet I haven’t the heart.

He’s reading Horrid Henry to himself.

For fun.

Not for school, not because he has to, but because he want to.

And it is a HUGE step.

Massive.

This is the boy who would shout and scream at me for forcing him to read.

This is the boy who cried himself to sleep because he’d never be able to do it.

This is the boy who got a 4E in his Autumn term assessment because he just wasn’t trying.

So I will listen to his murbling, snorting and laughing, I’ll revel in it while I can. He’ll soon catch on to the fact that he doesn’t have to say the words out loud though I doubt that will stop the laughs and snorts of delight.

Long may it last!!!!!

They’re back at school…so now what?

They are back at school so now what do I do? All summer long I have longed for them to go back to school as I couldn’t get anything done and now they are back and already time is hanging heavy.

I suppose it’s because I have the time that I manage to fill it. Everything gets organised (sort of) and jobs get done on a regular basis. The clocks all tick, the bins are never too full, the clothes get put away (at least once a week), the dogs get walked, my office floor can be seen, bills get paid on time, I have cash in my purse.

It’s just when they appear for any length of time that things unravel and priorities change. Getting them up and organised and entertained is top of my list. I cart them to swimming, to riding, to hockey, to friends. I organise parties and BBQs and holidays. I make sure they eat and stay semi clean. And I try to keep my head above water.

And now this morning I have managed to clear the kitchen, make bread, take the dogs out, sort the office, done an interview for work, sort the laundry, feed the cat, feed and move the chickens, kill some cockerels, prepare lunch and start writing a blog post.

There is still loads more to do, reams and reams of stuff, but it’s kind of quiet, too quiet and no one is interrupting me to say:

“The Boy hurt me!”

“I did not! You wouldn’t do as you’re told and anyway you hit me first….”

“Mummmmmmmy! Boy hurt me here, LOOK!”

“I didn’t Mum and anyway I didn’t hit him hard…he’s always saying it hurts”

Yep it is far too quiet, at least until 3.15….