Kids...You have to love them

Sunday School on Mother's Day we were discussing honoring your Mother even when she makes mistakes and forgiving them . I asked one of my first grade boys if his Mom ever makes mistakes. He responded..... Oh man, she makes a lot of them. I could only laugh.


Today my nephew received his work envelope for the week with all his grades for last week in it. He was stressed that he earned an F on his last vocabulary test. He does not make F's. He is an honor roll student and his parents are hard on him about staying on the honor roll. He showed it to me and asked if I would trash it before his Mommy saw it. I told him I couldn't. He gave me the goo-goo eyes. He asked if I could hide it in my garage. I don't know why the garage was so important because his Mom rarely comes over here. I told him I could not do that. He got quiet for awhile. I then looked at him messing with the envelope then erasing something and doing it again. My almost eight year old nephew was trying to forge their initials on the envelope they must sign each week. I never thought of such a thing until high school. That is how scared he was. The F paper was accidentally left here. It is not my fault that he packed all the papers up to take home while I was still looking at his mistakes. Then we ran out the door to go to baseball practice.

What would you do? I know what I should do but I also know how hard they are on him about his grades. It is crazy. Don't judge me until you are at his house during homework time. Dad sits there with an eraser to erase his mistakes before he even has a chance to see what he did wrong then gets yelled at for not doing it right.

Let me tell you about his last F paper from months ago. He was upset about it also. He was looking at it and was stressed about it. He packed his stuff up in the envelope and put it away. I was wondering why his Mom never seemed to fuss at him over that grade. Well a few weeks later my Mom found his F paper hidden under a bunch of papers on her desk. That devil.

It is sad though thought that at 7 years old this stresses him out and forces him to hide and think of ways to not let them see the grade.

We were not raised this way. If we made the honor roll, great. If we didn't she was still proud that we did our best. I remember waiting until leaving for the bus stop to show her a D that needed to be signed. She just asked... Did you try? I said yes and it was over. I didn't make many D's or F's though. I did fail 8th grade world literature. She was concerned but not stressed because it was all about mythology and I did not believe or understand it. It was against all Christianity that I had been taught. She asked if I had tried and even tried to do it with me. It wasn't happening. She knows I tried. No punishment, no fussing. It was over. I wish my sister would remember her upbringing. We turned out ok.

Kids write the craziest things....

The last two days I have been subbing for a special education teacher. Today's special education is not like the special education I grew up with. These are kids that may be a little slower or have ADD, ADHD, etc but the are in regular classes. I traveled to various classes during various times to assist kids either during math or language arts.

Yesterday I had a child that I was told struggles with reading and writing. They had a prompt to write about something that has made them happy. This boy needed no help getting started. I came back around to see his progress on what was supposed to be one paragraph with 10 sentences. He had written about 25 sentences in paragraph form about a trip to see the Philadelphia Eagles. He knew everything about that game. I was flabbergasted.Today, although, I found out he is a NFL fanatic. He had to write about a time he shared something with someone. He wrote about the time he went to see the Cleveland Browns play. He stretched his assignment and told me by going to the game that he shared his "TIME" with the Cleveland Browns. I just had to chuckle.

There was another girl today on the same assignment. She was writing about sharing her pencil with someone in class last year. The only problem was she did not write the word "pencil". I could tell she was trying to sound it out but she didn't write what was she was sounding out. The word she wrote was...... PENISL. Needless to say I had to look at it and put it in context and not laugh in the process. I then had her erase it and made her sound it out again with me guiding her. I didn't have the heart to tell her that she did not have that particular object to share with anyone and even if she had it, she should not share it until after marriage.

This next one happened at home. I came home and my nephew was showing me his homework. His spelling word was TAP and he had to use it in a sentence. He is a good thinker. He meant to write "I tapped my friend." What he wrote was " I tapth my frend." Ohh, spelling is my pet peeve so it is so hard for me not to correct all his spelling. Bless his heart , he is just sounding it out and writing what he hears. You have to love him.

I really enjoyed the last two days besides the time schedule. This school goes until almost 4 Pm and my nephew gets out at 2 Pm and this was the two days we had him. He was miserable waiting for me to get home. One of the little boys told me he saw me drive off yesterday and knows I drive a red car then he said he watched me from the bus because he liked me as his teacher. I walked another student to his bus. He told me to tell his teacher that he promises he will be better tomorrow. He saw me today at the end of the day and told me he had stayed on green all day. Green is "ready to learn" and it is a good day. I gave him a high five . He just grinned from ear to ear

I love rewarding days like today.

I'll take care of it myself, Grandpa

Kids, you have to love them. You never know what they might say or do. It can be quite comical sometimes.

Just now I was at the front of our store with the door open. A little girl about three was walking the sidewalk with her Grandpa. He had told her that if she just gave him whatever item she had in her hand that her walk would be so much easier. I can not tell you exactly what she had but it was small enough to have in her hand yet big enough to be a nuisance obviously. She looked at her Grandpa and said , " I don't need to give this to you. I'll take care of it myself." As she finished her sentence she proceeded to pull on her waistband pants and place it in her panties. Grandpa just looked at her.

You know I had was cracking up in the store because you never ever know what a kid will do. Do you? Now, I just hope that what she had can not hurt her because she just put that somewhere that I do not thing Grandpa is going to venture to fetch it.

Kids... gotta love them.