Friday was report card day. I know my boys are smart and I know they do their homework (because I hover over them like a vulture on a dying rabbit) so I wasn't the list bit worried as I opened the envelopes.
So, I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when my oldest (and most responsible) son brought home an F (hold on...I just threw up a little) in Spanish.
When I saw it, I was kind of in denial. I had to go back to the little grading chart like 3 times to make sure I wasn't mistaken...and I wasn't. Suddenly, the whole paper went black and all the other grades (a's and b's I might add) just disappeared and I could see was one ugly mark among the 9 on the paper.
Now, I don't want anyone to misunderstand...I was NOT an honor roll student by any stretch of the imagination...but I do expect more from my kids because, well, they're not ME! And more importantly, my husband is a brilliant man and wonderful teacher (as well as VERY educated in Spanish) so I would have thought my sons would know intuitively to come to him or me for help if they needed it.
My husband sent an email to the teacher to try to understand what happened and until we received a reply this morning, we focused on helping our son to understand what he must do to bring up his grade...including taking him to a Mexican restaurant for dinner and making him use his Spanish the whole time (lol...oh don't judge me!)
My husband and I had several discussions about "what we are doing wrong" that would lead to our son getting a failing grade in ANY of his courses...and I will admit, I felt a great deal of guilt, blame and shame around the whole thing, which made me rather defensive and angry. We came up with a plan that we thought would help our children become better students and increase their grades and we spent alot of time trying to figure out what we need to change as Mom and Dad to inspire our kids to do better in school...
And then, we got this reply from Max's Spanish teacher:
Thank you for e-mailing me. Max and I had talked about his grade a couple a weeks ago. In our discussion, Max admitted to me that he felt like he was struggling and asked me if he could have a tutor. I was very proud of him, because a lot of students don't like to admit they need extra help. I did find him a very strong 8th grade Spanish student to help him. He and Max have been working together for the past week and a half and I can see Max feeling more confident, which is wonderful. Right now, Max has an 86 for the 3rd quarter.
I think part of the problem was, he wasn't sure how to study properly for Spanish and he wasn't asking for help when he didn't understand. ... (Deleted some fluffy stuff here)
...Max is such a great kid and he participates all the time in class, even when he gets something wrong he still is not afraid of trying. This is wonderful to see because usually students have a hard time when they get something wrong and are afraid to try again.
And then I cried a little...
Mostly because I realized that all that time and energy we spent this weekend arguing over what we had done wrong or what Max had done wrong, was a big fat waste! Our time would have been better served to ASK what we could do to help and WAIT for the answer...because what we found out is that our kid is really good at (better than us apparently) asking for what he needs and then accepting the help.
So my Mom Reality Bytes #21 is that when it all boils down, we are left with the fact that we may not be raising a child who's awesome in Spanish...but we are raising a young man who is awesome at communicating his needs and honoring the gifts in others. And that is probably the most important language we can possess.
