I once went to a seminar by Ian Lillico who talked almost exclusively about raising and educating boys. I was incredibly inspired after listening to him that I returned home with a new belief that a lot of the issues I had in the day-to-day living with my son were common! In fact, I found myself nodding through much of the evening at his words and have since used many of his strategies to help me out at home.
At the end of Lillico's talk, an audience member put a query to him about how we, as parents, should choose the correct high school for our son. His response was that it was best to go with the mother's instincts. Now, whether he was being tongue-in-cheek or not - let's face it, the entire audience laughed - it certainly rang true as choosing a high school for my son, at the time, was a heart-wrenching, extremely difficult prospect.
In the end, we did go with my instinct (Ok, it was pretty much a consensus in the end, but my gut did most of the talking at one stage!)
Well, today's mail brought confirmation that my instinct was the correct one! Yes, our first formal high school mid-year report arrived and it was so wonderful that it brought tears to my eyes. In basic terms, he got 3 x As, 1 x C and all the rest Bs! Across the board, for effort he got As and Bs. And for behaviour it was all As! In fact, more than once, teachers commented that he was a 'pleasure to teach' (geez, I love reading that line on my kids' reports!) and the comment by his graphics teacher was so good that real tears of pride rolled down my cheek.
Now, given that his year 7 teacher told me that his attitude was terrible and that he would most certainly spend time in detention for not getting homework completed (it hasn't happened yet!), I really want to buy a frame for this wonderful bit of paper that brought complete joy to our house today!
Yaaayyyyy the 12 year old!
Lunch, Please
6 days ago
