a small parenting break-through

I recently blogged about the cloud-blanket that my number one sun carries with him. We were having a particularly bleak week. He was bleak, I was bleak. Each time I went to school, teachers were bleak, lining up to speak to me about the disruptive antics of said child.

His behaviour at school wasn't making any sense to any of us (his two parents and four teachers - at least I wasn't alone) which meant that we were pretty stumped as to how to handle it.

Fast forward 2 weeks... one evening I was telling the Zimbo about my stressful afternoon and was saying that I felt so stressed by the end of it that I didn't know whether to cry or vomit. Noah piped up (quite gleefully - from where he was warming his bum near the fireplace) that that is often how he feels before a particular lesson. In his words... " you know when your spit tastes like vomit and you think you might vomit?". The sick feeling comes when he has to do a certain task (writing in his 'feelings' journal). He said nothing makes sense to him. He doesn't understand the words in the story that has been read to the class (words like 'humility') and his body starts feeling angry.

I would go so far as to add that he feels angry with himself for not understanding the words, and also think that having to write "freely" is a problem for him. At home, if he is writing something down he checks in with me for the spelling of every word. If I'm not around (or am unwilling to help) he gets very agitated, says he is stupid and will stop trying to attempt it. It now makes perfect sense to me that he would damage his book (to destroy the evidence of his "inability") in anger with himself.

So I think we have two problems... 1) comprehension and 2) spelling ability (or confidence).

Yay! Surely that gives us something to work with! We are constantly telling him that we can all work together to learn how to do this so that writing does feel ok for him.

Parenting... man, it's exhausting.