The Most Reasonable Fit

My son did not have a good day at school today.   He was doing okay with the school part through most of the morning and then I reminded him of a reading obligation he had that he didn’t want to do last night so he put it off to today.  He wasn’t happy about more things being added to his long day before the weekend started as he was very much looking forward to a video game “hack” his father had been working on for him. 

My son likes hacks.   In this case, it wasn’t a bad hack, by hack my son means doing something the game designers didn’t expect you to do with their software or finding a loophole where you can do something you shouldn’t normally be able to do.   His father was getting things ready for this evening and the work was only piling up on my son’s side. 

He had to write a thank you note for some Christmas presents and read as part of his obligations at home before gaming was to commence.   He was going to have time for that because he was ahead of work at school until he got on his one on one call with the assistant teacher and realized he’d missed two things he should have gotten done earlier in the day or week and that tipped him over the edge.   

My son was in no way trying to get out of doing the work at school, it was an honest oversight, but it meant he had less time to get the reading and thank you note done than he thought—plus he had those two extra assignments he’d missed. 

It was lunchtime and my son was upset.   We tried to get him to eat, but he just couldn’t calm down.   The biggest thing that had upset him of all was—and get this—writing an address on a letter he’d written to a teacher who was leaving the school.

An address on an envelope and my son was losing it.   He said, “you know that freaks me out more than anything else.  Please don’t make me do it!”   I had missed the backstory to this as my husband has done some of the work with my son lately.   His class is the oldest class in the school and they write a lot of letters.   Apparently my son has a thing about writing on an envelope.  

We said he could do it after lunch.   He flailed about and then jumped around on the couches.  He grabbed and pulled down his hair, he threw himself on the ottoman.   Then he stood up and defiantly said, “this is the most reasonable fit I’ve had yet.”

My husband and I laughed at him and he got quite angry at us.   We had to explain that it was what he said that we were laughing at and we thought it was a very clever thing to say.  His father said, “that’s blog-worthy for sure” and my son got more frustrated that we were laughing at him.   We calmed him down and helped him understand we were impressed with the saying, not thinking he was silly. 

Now, hours later, it’s after eleven and my son has just gone up to bed.  Before he left I asked again what his issue was with the envelope labeling.   It turns out he’s worried about the need to be precise in his writing so that the letter will make it to its intended recipient.   My son knows cursive much better than print as that’s what Montessori schools teach, so having to write clearly in print is more stressful than cursive.   

The Big Boy Update:  Isn’t it interesting that as soon as the things a child doesn’t want to do aren’t an issue and they can do a preferred activity they’re happy, not tired and have plenty of energy.   Their entire demeanor changes.   Today, when we made an agreement with my son to divide up the reading over two days, letting him pick the times he wanted to complete the reading in so that he could play the video game he was so excited about after school, he was fine.  Totally fine.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I got a long time ago some material that I sewed over onto itself to make a blanket for several dogs ago.   It was the most fluffy, soft material at the time but today feels positively rough in comparison to some of the newer blankets.   There is a big hole in this blanket, making it sort of a sack.  My daughter likes to get in the sack and move all around the house in it, sweeping crumbs and dirt up along the way my brain screams out to me in protest.   Thank goodness we have Kevo, our Roomba, to sweep the floors every day so that my daughter can continue being a sack child during the colder months of the year.