Still Learning

My son is not a great student. He has never been the straight A’s kid, or gets 100% all the time, and like his pop writes more legibly with his feet.

With that, he is always respectful, his teachers love him, and tell us how much potential he has if he applied himself. This is exactly what I used to hear from my teachers when I was in school except that I would have F’s where my son get’s B’s, C’s, and the rare D’s.

In fact that is why he is taking Summer School. He earned D’s both semesters of English this year. Why? His focus was elsewhere. Band, Track, Guitar, Ukulele, & anything else that seemed cool. Something we figured would be difficult his first year of high school especially wanted to do so much. At the beginning of the year I warned him of his busy schedule but he assured me he could do it. I had to let him try. I told him that he would have to have a report card with no D’s in June to be able to stay on Track and Band this year.

When I saw the D I was as crushed as he was. I told him that he was done with any extra’s at school until he showed he could keep his grades up. I never expect him to be an all “A” guy but I cannot let him get into the slacker mode that plagues most schools.

I talked to my wife about it all because a part of me sees that most of the kids in school who were total slackers were not in sports or performing artsor anything for that matter. The kids that had more time on their hands seemed to be more wasteful of time in general and seemed to get into trouble during all that extra time. This is of course my opinion but I would love your thoughts on this.

Anyhow, we came up with a plan. He would have to take summer school and take English again. I told him that each session of summer school would be for one elective. He was planning on being in Band and on Track next year. If he passed both sessions of summer school with B’s or better then he could be in both but if not, then he would have to choose between one or the other.

The first session he got an A. And this session that ends Thursday looks as though he is going to get an A again. I hope so because it will be a major lesson in potential and hard work.

And as long as that all was, that was not the point of this post.

George’s grandmother is in town and bought tickets for all the kids to go to Six Flags this week. She asked me if he could miss a day of summer school to go since his grandma lives out of town and it would be a fun summer vacation kind of thing to do. I was not opposed at all but wanted to talk it over with Jasmine first and check with George to make sure he thought he would be okay with it.

I mentioned the trip in front of the both of them and George said, “I am not going to go! (He seemed offended that I even suggest it) I am going to summer school because I messed up. I am there to fix something and I am NOT going to screw myself up now! I want an A+ and I am not going to mess it up now after all the work I have done.”

I wanted to high five him but that was not the time. He is getting it. He is becoming a person that recognizes that you can learn from your mistakes and come out a better person because of it. He sees that he can do so much more when he puts his mind to it and that his priorities must be aligned with his future plans. He is learning to be a good person which is why I became a parent. To raise someone who could make better choices in this world and hopefully change it for the better.

I learned that every bad event can turn into a learning process for both me and my children. I learned that you can be strict and still show love to your kids. I have learned that the best thing I have ever done as a parent is to not forget what it was like to be a kid. I have learned that walking the line of friend and parent is difficult but so far has worked well with my kids.

I just hope it will continue to work.