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When progress reports came out half way through the school marking period, my adopted stepson was not doing so hot in Latin II, in fact he was pretty close to failing the class, and we were not too happy about it. While we understand that Latin is a very hard language to learn, and the second year of Latin is even harder since the entire text book is written in Latin with no English in it whatsoever, he was not having difficulty learning the language due to a lack of skill, it was simply a lack of doing the work and turning it in that had earned him his bad grade.
While he was busy working hard on making up all of the work that he had failed to do and turn in, his History grade began to suffer, but thanks to edline.com, the program that the school uses to keep parents updated on their child’s current grades we were able to catch the slip fairly quickly and speak to him about the missing assignments that had appeared on his grade sheet. As I spoke, his face had become more and more tense, and I could tell that the attitude was about to fly at any given second.
When it did, it was certainly not as bad as I had anticipated that it would be, yet he still had a tone that was unacceptable, and I called him on it right away, telling him calmly that his tone was not warranted towards me, as I was not the one who had failed to do the assignments. To my utter surprise his tone changed immediately and not only did his instantly apologize, but continued right along to say that it was not me that he was mad at, it was himself, and since he couldn’t really yell at himself it had come out at me, and he understood that that was wrong.
So after taking a moment or two to pick my jaw up off the floor, I we went over the few assignments that were missing, talked about what they were and if he needed help with them, as well as if he happened to still have the worksheets in his backpack. I sent him back upstairs to get started on his homework and makeup work, and then sat back and marveled at the response that he had given me when I had called him on his attitude.
A few years ago he would have argued, he would have found every excuse and reason under the sun as to why and how this could not possibly, by any stretch of the imagination be his fault, or he would have stood their sulking and brooding, refusing to say a word at all, only nodding in acknowledgment of the fact that you were indeed speaking to him. Now, however, he is turning into quite the outstanding man, who still slips up and makes mistakes, but is learning to accept responsibility for them so that he can actually learn from his mistakes, instead of trying to pass the blame off on those around him.
Not only was he willing to admit that he was the one who had dug himself into the hole, but he worked his tail off until the end of the quarter and was able to pull his almost ‘F’ all the way up to an ‘A’! It seems as though he is finally letting go of playing the victim and blaming others, using his past as a crutch, and growing up, working through his abandonment issues and growing up!
This is where we want our children to be. I am working on my daughter for the same thing. And I love the powerschool thing we have for checking up on the kids grades. It is awesome so we can help them before it is too bad.