Sometimes this parenting thing is hard

The school has this online thing where you can check your child's every grade. With most of my kids, whatever. But I have this extremely smart son who thinks so much out of the box that he's not interested in playing "the game" of school. Sometimes he's reading when he's supposed to be listening to a math explanation, sometimes he's dreaming about particle physics when he's supposed to be diagramming sentences, etc., and then he misses assignments or doesn't finish or forgets to turn things in. From a very early age, it was clear he was a gifted writer. He should have straight As, based on his abilities. But getting him to turn things in on time--so hard! Thanks to this online thing, we discovered that he'd neglected to write and turn in his autobiography, which was a rather large part of his grade. So he sat up all night the other week and wrote it. It turned out excellent--I wish I had such a strong natural voice! Of course it was late, so his grade was docked a whole letter grade (even though the teacher liked it, too). They were supposed to do an oral report based on this (basically, read it aloud), and while he turned the written part in late, he still made it in before the oral report deadline. Except, the teacher never called on him. I've been thinking for a week and a half that they just haven't gotten to it, and last night discovered that er, my son never asked about it. And so the day came and went, and he had a zero. Which shredded his grade into tatters (and this is the GT class, which he NEEDS to be in to have any interest in school, but if he doesn't keep up his grades in there, well...). Today is the LAST day of the grading period. So we sent him in to school to negotiate with his teacher. I could have written her myself, but when you're in sixth grade, you need to take responsibility. We talked about the fact that she might just not accept it, and he might just have to take the zero, and to "be professional about it." A quick look online just now confirms that she did let him give the report. Whew!

This is what is hard about parenting, though. You want to absorb the nasty consequences of your kids' choices, but there's a point where you have to let them experience what happens when they don't listen. For a kid who is normally conscientious, I can see stepping in to save the day when they overlook something small. But sometimes the only way to learn about cause and effect is to actually experience it. And I'd sure rather have him get a low grade in 6th grade and learn from it than to "save" him until high school or college, when bombing a class has a much more significant consequence.

Now, if he can just remember not to lose his coat... He lost his new coat on the very day the school emptied the lost and found, and so yesterday I got to buy a new one. I would have just gotten something from the thrift store, but there was nothing that fit, and well, this IS Idaho...natural consequences or not, I can't send him to school when it's -20 in just his sweater. So sometimes you just do absorb it.

Still. I'm SO glad we have a little vacation after today! Both to escape the constant vomiting at school, and to take a mental rest from assignments.

What I did today

Today I turned this into packed pumpkin. (Why yes, that large one was from my garden, thanks for asking!) After baking, blenderizing, running it through a sieve to get the fibers out, and running it through cheesecloth to get the extra liquid out, I ended up with something like six pies' worth. Also, a bunch of juice. So I looked up Mugglenet's pumpkin juice recipe and tried it. Drinkable (nonfat) pumpkin pie. YUM.