Category: Notweet

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.

The boy finished the third Harry Potter book today, The Prisoner of Azkaban, so he got his wish and was allowed to watch the third movie. The lass pretended this didn’t bother her, but failed miserably at it. She tried to disguise her discontent by claiming that it wasn’t fair her brother could stay up later while she couldn’t. Knowing her though, it’s as much to do with that as her brother getting to watch the movie while she can’t.

I’d forgotten how enjoyable this movie was. By that I mean, had I not read any of the books, this movie, out of the lot of them, was the most interesting and entertaining in many ways. Perhaps it was just the one that lent itself the best to being adapted to the big screen. Perhaps it was the way they manage the ending, which yes was obviously laid out by the book. Still, there are plenty of examples of the movie adaptations screwing up the source material. Somehow, they managed not to do that with The Prisoner of Azkaban. The result was a well told story on the screen.

The boy is plunging ahead with his reading. He’s already started The Goblet of Fire. He figures it will take him 2 months to read it, since it took him 1 month to read this last one and it’s half the length of TGF.

Time will tell.

When I was the boy’s age and came home with writing assignments, my Mom would look over my work. I always handed it to her thinking what I had written made total sense. I was sure they were nothing short of a masterpiece.

The problem was, most of the time they only made sense to me. In addition to the grammar and spelling errors, Mom would hammer home the point that writing is meant to be read; thus, the writer needs to draw the reader into the writer’s world. This point seems obvious now, but when there are adventures to be had, games to be played, and mischief to be made, it’s not the sort of lesson that takes.

With that, I present the boy’s latest creative writing product:

Frank is a very interesting creature. He was not born with a nose but he has special gills. So he can breathe in any condition. He had one big, huge, raging eye. The other was lost in a fight. The creature had a blue body. He was thin like a human. He had a red head and green arms and legs. His wavy arms and a pair of stick figured arms. His arms would fly everywhere when the wind blew. He would also swing on branches that held his weight. Frank’s wobbly green legs had spiky points to help him stand. Frank smelled like hamburgers. The creature sounded like a T-rex when he roared. He moved faster than lightening. When Robbie saw him, he screamed “AHHHHHHHHHHH” all the way home.

Raise your hand if you laughed at the “hamburger” line. The boy is always thinking with his stomach, even when he isn’t.

The assignment was to write a description of an alien. I think there’s lots of good stuff in there. It’s also exactly the sort of thing Mom would have had me hammer away at for awhile. Obviously, there’s some sentence problems. Overall, it doesn’t flow well and it’s a little unbalanced- there’s a lot of stuff about Frank’s arms, but only a brief mentions of his eyes and the gills- arguably much more interesting features.

Given all that, here’s the rub. If I have him work on all that, is it still 3rd grade writing? If I don’t have him work on that, does he still learn to write better? Where’s the happy medium between the two?