Dear Connor,
I’m going to be honest with you: it’s kind of rough being your Mom lately.
Except when it’s not, of course.
I guess I’ve been putting off finishing this post because, while I want to document and remember everything, your behavior and our reactions to it have been at the forefront of my mind lately, and I don’t want to taint this entire missive with my current frustration level. Overall, it’s been a really good year — it’s just in the past couple of months that things have kind of tanked, and I think I can see a light at the end of this behavior tunnel.
Your defiance and inattention have been at an all-time high in the mornings and the evenings, when your Dad and I spend the most time with you. You’ve also been trying to get away with things you know aren’t allowed, like sneaking your tablet upstairs to play after lights-out — then you say hurtful things to me when I bring the consequences:
“I hate you.”
“You’re stupid.”
“I wish you weren’t my Mom.”
And my personal favorite hurtful non-sequitur:
“You’re fat.”
I’ve been managing to keep my temper, mostly, and trying to come up with new strategies to help us get along. You have a laser-focus on what you want in any given moment, and if you don’t get it, or if it doesn’t turn out quite like you planned, you go ballistic. I try to offer incentives for good behavior, and let you do things you want to do whenever possible, but everything seems to come back to bite me in the end.
For example, we agreed that you could come downstairs and have some morning screen time if you got ready for school first. Then I backed it off to just getting dressed. You know that you get up and come downstairs way before I do, though, so there’s no way I can really stop you from having screen time in your jammies, short of hiding all the remotes and devices.
Another example: I tried instituting a Reward Gem system, where if you do one of two behaviors (getting dressed before I get downstairs or turning off screens without a second reminder), you get to move a green Reward Gem to the Earned bucket and I put a tally mark on the reward chart. After ten gems, you get to pick from the prize box. One day, you decided to try sneaking a gem and tally mark (and you did a good job of writing that tally mark, may I add). Once you saw I was onto you, you lost all interest in earning Reward Gems.
I hope this is a phase.
While you do have the occasional slip-up at school (like throwing rocks on the roof during recess), your teacher says you’ve been behaving well overall, and that you’ve actually been extra-focused lately. The color-coded behavior calendar you bring home in your binder tells the story: you always end the day on either red (which is good) or orange (which is better).
I tried to coach you on your vocabulary words the other day over dinner, and you informed me that “we’re not doing this.” You also said that, if our places were switched, you’d be asking if your child could skip straight to third grade.
I know how you feel, buddy. I was bored in elementary school, too. Lucky for me, the school I moved to for third grade had a Gifted program for math and science. Your school doesn’t start any sort of enrichment program until fourth grade — and even that’s only 30 minutes per week.
So, unless we look into how to get you a specialized Written Education Plan (WEP), I guess you’re going to have to get used to it. I wish I had better news for you.
This was the year you started taking karate. You’ve been taking classes two to three times a week for the past nine months or so, and you earned your purple belt last month. Your karate teacher had originally said you weren’t quite ready for the Intermediate class, but he changed his mind after you showed you could really focus when you put your mind to it.
You were ON FIRE the week before belt testing. On the day that the Black Belt Training Club was earning their Intensity stripe, you were SO intense for the ENTIRE class. You even told your class buddy that you’d talk AFTER CLASS — and, yes, I could hear the ALL CAPS in your stage whisper. There were a couple times you started playing with your belt, but you reined yourself in within seconds. After you earned your stripe at the end of class, your teacher complimented you on how focused you were in class.
So proud, buddy.
The Intermediate class is perfect for you. There are kids both older and younger than you, higher and lower in rank, and everyone helps everyone else. Whenever your mind wanders, your closest classmate will just tap you on the shoulder and remind you to focus. That’s exactly what you need: no judgement, just a reminder.
(Mental note: maybe I should remember that.)
This was also the year you got glasses! You wanted glasses so bad that you threw the first eye exam on purpose, just to try to get the eye doctor to give you glasses. You went back the month after your 7th birthday for another exam, and that time you were completely honest with the doctor, so you got your glasses.
Nowadays, we find you lounging in the recliner with your glasses on the side table; you tell us they’re uncomfortable when you’re lying down. We get that — your Dad and I both wear glasses, too, and have for a long time — but we make you put them back on, anyway. Eventually, you’ll figure out how to relax your head without your glasses digging into the side of your face.
Bedtimes have been getting more chill as you’ve gotten older, for the most part. We still have to keep you on task during the routine, even when you resist supervision and yell, “Stop occupying me!”
You really hate taking the time to brush your teeth properly, except when you get hyper-focused on it and decide to floss, too — then you wonder why your gums are bleeding. I really wish you’d brush your teeth better, but I’m not sure how to make that happen without a fight.
As a side note, you haven’t lost any teeth in a while. You’re due for another dentist visit soon (at which I’m sure I’ll get lambasted for your poor dental hygiene), and you’ll be going back to the orthodontist regularly to see if/when braces or other appliances will be appropriate. (He said we’d wait until more teeth come in before we make a decision on what to do next.)
Anyway, after you’re in bed, you stay there. You rarely get up and ask for anything after lights out these days, although there are times when we have to remind you to stop reading and turn off your light. You’ve been pretty good about not arguing for another minute, too — you’ll ask to finish the page you’re on, and then you’ll turn out the light without another prompting.
You’d rather read graphic novels than chapter books. You’ve been really into Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield, but you recently discovered that you like the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, which are still kind of comics, but more words than pictures.
Jamaica was this year’s Schnuth family vacation destination. That trip deserves a blog post all its own, but suffice it to say for now that you had even more fun in Jamaica than you did in Mexico. We went to an adventure park where we climbed a waterfall and rode zip-lines, along with some other fun stuff. Plus, at the resort, we got upgraded to a one-bedroom suite, which meant you got to sleep in the main room by yourself while Dad and I slept in the bedroom. The Kids’ Club wasn’t as cool as the one in Mexico, but everything else was pretty awesome.
You finally got to see fireworks on the Fourth of July this year! Last year’s fireworks in Sylvania didn’t work out so well, since you’d gotten biffed in the eye with a locker earlier that day, and it hurt so bad we went to Urgent Care. This year, though, I got the scoop on a great spot to watch the fireworks downtown, and we all had a great time!
Well, up until right after the Grand Finale, when it started to rain.
By the time we got to a sheltered spot under the High-Level Bridge, we were drenched. We made the best of it, though.
After one of your friends from day camp this summer invited you to his birthday party at Funagin’s, you decided you wanted your party there, too. For your party, you chose rollerskating and laser tag for your two activities, and the arcade games and ticket redemption games were included. Everybody had a great time, and we decided we’ll have to go back sometime as a family and get our rollerskating on.
As you might expect, you’re still one of the tallest kids in your grade. In the middle of September, your pediatrician measured you at 4 feet, 4.8 inches tall (which is the 84th percentile for height) and 53 pounds (the 32nd percentile for weight). You can’t wait to get to 5’6″ so you can try the BOYO at Imagination Station.
This parenting thing is a total roller-coaster, and we don’t always have all the answers. We’re all in this together, though, you and your Dad and I, and we’re learning to respect one another and help each other get through the day.
I love it when you tickle me to cheer me up, or when you try to trick your friends into watching you give me a goodbye kiss on the lips. I even smile when you follow directions promptly and politely, because that makes me happy, too.
You are so much your own person, and I think that’s who you’re going to stay. That might not make sense to you right now, but just keep on being yourself. Anyone who gives you the side-eye for acting crazy just doesn’t know you. You are joyous and independent and rebellious and I hope you never stop.
Love you, buddy.
