The boy had a miserable time with homework this week. He hasn’t melted down quite like he did in a long while. Tears and crying that he couldn’t do it, it was too hard, it was stupid. The Wife and I were finally able to convince him to walk away long enough for him to calm down.
It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that shortly after that, he was able to finish his homework.
while he was suffering through it all, I realized this was the first time where I sympathized with him. There are times when a child breaks down in tears and my first thought is “This kid is trying to manipulate the situation.” That’s one of those survival instinct residuals from their infancy. When they needed something then, they cried. We parents try to wean them of that behavior as they mature. Who knows how long it takes.
This episode struck me as sincere. Not in the sense that he couldn’t do it, but in the sense that he was really struggling. He was putting effort into the work and it was frustrating him that he couldn’t finish it. Then, the frustration overwhelmed his still meager coping skills and he did the only thing left for a 9-year old when everything seems hopeless: cry.