All About The Climber

Or; Work Play Love (at age 7).

WORK.
I help out in the classroom once or twice a week and was horrified on my last visit by the quiet time-wasting being achieved by my child. I mean, he's never exactly been Mister Studious but the distractability had reached epic proportions in this class I observed. The class project was to grow beans in a bag, and they were given a worksheet with three sections: 1. Materials 2. Method 3. Predictions. Halfway through the class I had a look at Climber's sheet, and found to my horror that he'd written One Word (Water in the materials section). I chivvied him and came back ten minutes later to find the chivvying was a waste of good breath seeing as he'd added exactly One More Word (Bag, still in the materials section), which might have happened anyway, chivvying or no. He'd just been too busy picking up any random object near him and making an interesting game out of it - duelling pencils, folding scraps of paper etc. Taking care to always be quiet enough never to draw any teacherly attention to himself. So then, being an interfering, bossy mother, I stayed behind him for the rest of the class and made him Do His Work. Even then he was finding it hard to stay on task, pardon my jargon. And not just because it is extremely annoying to have your mother in class clucking get back to work every 3 seconds. Upon leaving the classroom, I fretted all day and all night and generally carried on like a pork chop about it to him and Fixit and anyone else in earshot, before arranging to see his teacher. My concern was that as a kid who is neither the best or worst in the class he slips through the cracks a bit; that because he reads, writes and 'rithmatics well and doesn't really misbehave as such, his under-achieving within his own capabilities was going unnoticed. (Also I am bewildered because he is A First Child, so why is he not an over-achieving goody two-shoes like I was? Why??!!) Anyway, his teacher was great and immediately implemented a plan involving daily reporting on whether Climber completes his tasks, and repercussions if not; and so far the fact that there is now some sort of consequence for doing or not doing work seems to have gee-ed him up a bit. I can report that he was working much more diligently when I went to class today. (Aren't you glad I'm not your Mum?)

PLAY.
Climber was reported for punching another child in the face, which turned out to be a case of some tom-foolery gone wrong but because it happened at assembly he had to explain his actions to the Principal. The over-achieving goody-two-shoes in me was of course appalled. However, everyone is satisfied that he did not mean to punch the other kid either hard or in the face (and the other kid threw the first play-punch and at least two others were also play-punching), but he's now heard a few of us say things like if you hadn't been mucking around in the first place etc etc. Climber said it was actually much worse explaining himself to his own teacher because his teacher made his eyes all big and looked really surprised at him whereas the Principal just had her normal face on, except not smiling.

LOVE.
A while ago I'd said to another Mum, jokingly in that way you do, My Climber likes your C, to which she replied that her C had mentioned that she thought she had a crush on Climber. How we laughed, aren't they sweet? It was still just looking sweet when he made her a Get Well card when she missed one day of school with gastro last week. Only, now C has gone on holidays, hard on the heels of Climber having decided quite firmly that she was The One, and all week I've been having these heart-twisting conversations with him. Firstly we had them about how much he liked her (you should have seen his happy smile when I let on that C allegedly crush-ed him back). But now we're onto the tear-stained ones about how he is feeling so desolate because he won't see her for 4 weeks. She'd been gone half a day. Last night he said I feel like she is the last piece of the jigsaw and I need her. I am not making that up. Brings back the days when I fell for Jeff Wilson like a tonne of bricks and used to sneak up behind him at lunch time and touch him on the back, hoping he wouldn't know and he told me never do that again and then my Dad consoled me by advising me to turn my attention elsewhere and I told him after a couple of weeks that I'd decided to like Jeremy but I could never love him the way I loved Jeff. Sigh. Apples and trees.

This is him making an I Missed You card for C's return. Which is 4 weeks away still, but who's counting?