K missed the entire week of school that the National History Day materials were due, as well as the school competition. Even though he was feeling better by Friday, he waited until Sunday afternoon to finish his project and put his exhibit together. I was done, done nagging, done walking this line. I was going to let him fail. I teared up, over and over again while watching the Grammys (our tradition), all the while K cursed the fact that I wouldn’t let him watch until his project was done. After the Grammys were done, I continued to wait up, and the clock approached midnight and he continued to throw everything together in the most half-assed of ways.
I cried because I felt as if I had done too much catering to him. Some of it was not his fault—paper construction and proof-reading, finding MLA citation websites and teaching him how to attribute photos to the photographers. Those should have been taught by the teachers! Some of it was his fault—like the lengthy debates on how to incorporate this year’s theme into the project title and constant reprimands to not use texting language in a school paper. I still wondered, however, how none of these things came up in class, and I waivered back and forth between anger at the school for their incompetency and anger at my son, for “obviously” not paying attention when they covered these things.
He had procrastinated and avoided, argues and complained, and I couldn’t figure out if I had done too much or not enough.
He turned his project in the day he returned to school. It took his teachers nearly three weeks to get around to grading it. In the meantime, we waited as K brought home stories of classmates who were given incompletes on the project and sent home with lists of items that needed to be fixed in their projects. I knew that he would end up among them, and I had come to terms with that. I was hoping it would inspire him to do better the next time around—to take his schoolwork seriously for the first time in years. I wanted him to see that half-assing your way through life, and being badgered continuously to do better were not the way to go about doing your work.
He came home at the end of last week with the report of his project’s grade. No incomplete. A good grade. Compliments from his teachers. The knowledge that if he hadn’t been sick for the competition, he would have moved on to regional’s. Where normal parents would have been happy to hear such a good report, my heart sank. I want my children to do well, and the fact that he got a decent grade on a project was very good news, but reinforcing his behaviors on this project would not convince him to do better. He would just see that scraping by would suffice.
There was redemption, in the end. K came to me later that night, and confessed that the project felt like a hollow victory. At first he wanted to shove it in my face, but that feeling quickly died away. He knew that we were disappointed in the way he had delayed and coasted. He told me about how bad he felt when his teacher complimented his work. It had not been his best work, by any means. That it hurt to see others take his project seriously, since he had not taken it seriously at any stage. That after months of saying that he wanted nothing to do with the competition he now understood that if he had really tried, if he had shown everyone what he was really capable of, he might have had the chance to win.
After constantly struggling, constantly walking the line between allowing him to investigate his interests, and making sure he learns what he needs for adulthood, after endless talks about how to make the most of one’s education and how to keep doors open to other pursuits, it finally feels like he understands now, on some small level.
K has not complained about school for the past week. He still needs to be nagged to do his homework, but he actually studied for his science test and got an A, for the first time in I don’t know how long. He even brought a signed note home from his honors math teacher, proclaiming that he’s already brought up his grade to a B+. When she shared grades with the students during class, he told her that there was no way I would believe it.
More importantly, he has talked about improving his grades in order to take the ‘hippie painting class in the park’ this summer—an art program that has been advertised recently. He wondered aloud about getting his guitar back and taking up lessons. He asked me what it would take to get back on track to take physics the year after next, since he found out he would not be allowed next year, due to his piss-poor science and math grades. After all of it, NHD may have just been the thing we needed.
I know that each and every parent struggles with their children’s education and that a lot of people think they would love to have the problem of a kid who is too damn smart for his own good. I think we all have the same problem, actually. I think that we have lost the capacity to teach our children to love learning, no matter their age or level or circumstance.
Would I have to keep walking this line, feeling like a helicopter mom some days and a complete bitch on others, if there were teachers who were instilling the skills for life-long learning and exploration? I don’t know the answer, so I don’t expect you to either.
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