If I can’t find my phone around the house, it’s likely because one of my kids confiscated it.
What they are doing with it depends on the kid.
If Beckett, 9, has it, he’s doing one of two things – looking through my settings to see how much storage space is available and how much data I am using, for some reason, or playing games that I downloaded years ago out of desperation during a long wait at a doctor’s office. Because he’s so accustomed to the larger iPad, the phone doesn’t keep him entertained for too long.
When Carson, 8, gets his hands on my phone, I have to be ready to do without for a while. Rather than play games or sneak through my settings for unusual statistics, he goes straight to the photo album to look at new and old pictures. He has a ball looking at videos and photos, especially if they are funny and of other people, such as from last weekend’s Christmas parade in Ocean City.
Although their chosen phone activities are different, there are some similarities as well. Whenever one sees the other with my phone, the bickering begins with the other wanting what he can’t have at that very moment. Additionally, I always get it back different than it was received.
Beckett will oftentimes do something while fiddling in my settings, such as putting it on airplane mode or disconnecting Bluetooth.
With Carson, he may delete a photo or video of himself if he doesn’t like it and has been known to even text message people in my contacts some random gibberish. I usually discover the latter when it’s too late, of course.
The issuance of reports cards is an interesting time for us.
For Beckett, it involves a lot of pressure. Though we encourage high expectations for him, most of the stress he seems to feel regarding his grades comes from within. Although I like to think he wants to make us proud, at least a little bit, it’s easy to determine he more so wants to score well compared to his classmates. It’s a competition thing.
I can recall several instances over the years when he has gotten an A on a test but been disappointed because another student scored a few points higher than him. He was headed in that direction this week when I complimented him on a math test when he got nearly a perfect score. He deflected the comment, saying so and so got every question right. I reminded him so did he and that he just got half of a point off for not remembering to add the dollar sign to his answer.
When I went over another test, it was a similar sort of conversation. With this child, I have to wonder whether it’s okay that he’s entirely self-motivated for what seems to be the wrong reasons. He’s motivated by competition against his peers rather than simply wanting to do well for himself or (gasp) to make his parents proud.
For us, by the time the report card is issued, we pretty much know what his grades will be in his subjects by his test scores. I’m more interested in what his marks are for behavior, effort, respect, courtesy and the other social aspects being evaluated than his actual grades.
When we told him we got his report card last month, Beckett’s first reaction was, “and …” When we went through it with him and told him he did well and we were proud of him, his reaction was, “but …” We assured him there was nothing more to come and he seemed surprised because he’s his biggest critic. He was incredibly relieved, which has been making me wonder if there’s something we don’t know.
Report card time for Carson has never been a major concern for us. We prefer to measure his progress by how he functions in day-to-day life rather than grades he receives at school. It’s great news when both these measuring sticks – personal observations from us and his teachers as well as his grades — are positive.
Every day is different with Carson, who has to overcome a variety of issues on a daily basis. Not the last of which is the fact that communicating for him is entirely different because he’s non-verbal.
With our youngest son, rather than have high expectations for grades and performance, we just hope he’s keeping up in the general education setting, following the rules and learning. We keep the daily expectations simple for him and for us. It’s just the best way to go for us.
That’s why when we learned he had made the Honor Roll for the first term we were pleasantly surprised. We knew he had done well on his report card but we didn’t realize he had done that well.
As a result, he was among the many students recognized at the first term recognition ceremony at his school for his academic prowess. Later, in the same event, however, we were shocked to learn he had received the music award for his class for the marking period.
Hearing his name was a moment I will never forget because it was such a surprise. Not all days are great with our Carson, but that surely was an outstanding and memorable one.
