School Drama

He survived the week. Not only did he survive, he did great.

I'm learning to not put expectations or assumptions on my children. I totally thought Jack was going to have a rough week and it was going to be a traumatic transition for him. I couldn't have been more wrong. He was SO ready.

He had a green week all three days. While some families may think "yeah, of course, what else is there?" We haven't gotten to see too many of those with our oldest (whose kinesthetic learning tendencies and very strong verbal skills aren't always recognized as that by the school system), and we think those green stickers are a pretty big deal.

This has however made for some interesting dynamics between the boys. Jack always asks Josh what he got when he gets in the car, and enjoys telling Josh he got a green day and "it's not that hard, you just have to try your best." Needless to say my oldest does not take very well to having his little brother out do him, let alone telling him it's "easy."

While Jack has been doing wonderfully it's been a really hard week for me. I keep going back and forth between being upset I'm one step closer to an empty house and feeling overwhelmed wondering how the heck I'm going to survive until they are out of the house.

As much as I had hoped having Jack in preschool would make me have a ton of time, so far it's done the opposite. I have to drop Josh off at 8, come home and get Jack and myself ready, drop him off at 9:20, feed EvaKate, run any errands, or go to bible study or exercise, get myself and EvaKate fed again, pick Jack up at 1:20 come home and try to let my sleep deprived daughter get about 40 minutes of sleep before throwing her in the car to go pick up my oldest. So far my daughter is not getting enough sleep and I feel like I have less time. We'll see how the next week or so progresses, but we may have to make some changes.

We've also been really struggling with what to do about Josh. The kid is a talker. Shocking I know. He also is very smart and very active, all of which combined together doesn't thrive so well in the public school system.

Getting "E" days are a rarity, and more often we are getting notes sent home about how he's talking, reading books during social studies, not sitting still, etc. Often he'll even get in trouble for talking at lunch. Seriously? As a mom I need to support the school and it's rules and for the most part I understand them. But it's really hard when I don't feel like what Josh did was bad or wrong but simply them enforcing crowd control. There are no easy options. Homeschool isn't a perfect fix by any means and honestly is not an area where I'm very gifted in. Chris knows the downsides to homeschooling and I know the downsides to public school. And we don't even see the point in paying thousands upon thousands of dollars for our kid to go to a private school and have the same issues.

We've literally tried every disciplinary and reward tactic we know, we've talked to professionals (I love having a childhood counselor as a friend!) and taken their advice, all without much luck. The common theme: consistency and perseverance. But that is really hard, and defeating. We are doing the best we know how and trying to balance encouragement and praise in with the discipline. I feel inadequate and am having my first experience of really having to fully trust Christ with my children and their hearts. I can't make Josh obey, or want to obey. He has to want to and the Holy Spirit will have to help him.

Parenthood sure increases your prayer life!