We got an email from our son's teacher recently saying he was having problems at school. He was disruptive, grumpy and not finishing his work. This wouldn't be such a horrible thing except that he's in kindergarten! Of course, I jumped to the extreme thinking, "If he is unhappy in kindergarten how will he ever make it though high school!?! " I never realized I was such a drama queen until I had kids. :-)
That night at work, as I was browsing through the new non-fiction section, I ran across a book called The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World by Anthony Rao. The chapter heading that grabbed me was "He hates school", a sentiment our son had voiced loudly and often. I loved this book! Right off Rao ticked off many characteristics that we have noticed or have been pointed out to us by teachers in the last year or two, short attention span, lack of eye contact, short temper and an inability to follow directions. Rao makes an effort to point out that all of these things are normal in most boys before the age of about eight. Now, obviously there are exceptions, and if a parent is seeing extreme forms of these characteristics they should talk to their pediatrician. But, most of the time, these things are just the "darkness before the dawn" kinds of things. Rao says that most boys will hit a real low point in their behavior before making a big developmental leap. Good to know!
Rao also makes a point of talking about the differences between girls and boys. This was also very helpful for me. I try not to compare my kids to each other, but sometimes it is hard not to do! Our girls are very verbal and strong willed. Our son is strong willed too, but because his verbal skills have developed more slowly he often gets bowled over by the girls. They finish sentences for him, or move on to other topics all together! While this is difficult to deal with at home and in the classroom, it is also completely normal. (At this time I would also like to point out that when I created a post on Facebook about the trouble we were having I had at least ten people say they were in the same spot with their kids! Which begs the question of how we could be adapting our school days to help out these boys who need a bit more activity and physicality? But that is another blog....)
The Way of Boys gave some good advice on how to make home life a little more like school (talking about how the same basic rules apply at both places, practicing organization) and how to work with your child's teacher so everyone is on the same page. All in all, it allowed me to take a deep breath and relax.
And then I was also reminded that it is March, we have had snow on the ground since December and Spring is nowhere in sight. It snowed again last night and, truth be told, I'm feeling a bit uncommunicative, grumpy and peckish myself!
