I’m exhausted from this working nonsense.\u00a0 I worked a whole day today, plus karate!\u00a0 Luckily there were no drum lessons this week.\u00a0 LOL!\u00a0 Before bed I wanted to write a quick post about some growing-up observations I had with Lex this afternoon.<\/p>\n
In the car on the way to karate I asked if he had any homework today.\u00a0 He said, “Well, kind of.”\u00a0 Apparently his ELA teacher gave them an assignment, due Monday, to write three things they want to accomplish this year.\u00a0 “Basically goals, without calling them goals,” he tells me.\u00a0 Goal setting is one of his least favorite things.\u00a0 Right up there with vaccinations and trying new foods. All have left him on the floor, under chairs, in tears.\u00a0 As I mentally prepared myself for a weekend of goal setting with Lex, he said, “I’m just going to write three down and then forget them.”\u00a0 Um… ok.\u00a0 Not really the intended goal, but certainly a suggestion I’ve made in the past in an effort to get him off the floor.\u00a0 He then went on to tell me the goals he decided to set!\u00a0 The first one is to get all of his grades up to an A, the second one he couldn’t remember, and the third was to keep his assigned 40-book challenge sheet up to date.\u00a0 All good goals, I assume.\u00a0 Then he tells me that he had a B+ in science, but when he checked it today his teacher had a put in a few more grades and he was up to an A again.\u00a0 Check that goal off the list!\u00a0 He also told me that he’s sure he’s read at least 40 books already (they are allowed to count books they read over the summer, so yeah, he’s read at least 40!), so he’s going to just write down a bunch of books he knows he’s read and be done with the challenge.\u00a0 LOL!\u00a0 Check that goal off the list!\u00a0 Now he just needs to remember what Goal #2 was.<\/p>\n
I realize this is not the intent of goal setting, and I will also confess that I am TERRIBLE at goal setting, but I did notice several points of growth in this conversation, and I shared them with him.\u00a0 First, he didn’t cry over this assignment!\u00a0 It didn’t even stop him in his tracks.\u00a0 Instead of getting hung up on whether or not he could do the goals, he just wrote something down.\u00a0 He’s a very honest person and in the past the idea of committing to something he didn’t know if he could accomplish really got him stuck.\u00a0 Today he was able to write them down and move on!\u00a0 Second, I remember (not so fondly) the days of elementary school when he was assigned to read for 20 minutes a day.\u00a0 After reading for hours he would then fall apart because he didn’t “do his homework” because he didn’t time himself reading for exactly 20 minutes.\u00a0 When I tried to tell him that he just read for an hour, he struggled to fill out the stupid form with a start and stop time because it wasn’t, in his mind, an “official” reading for 20 minutes.\u00a0 Today he has the flexibility to say, “yeah, I read those books in the past, that counts!” and move on!\u00a0 Awesome!!\u00a0 Again, maybe not entirely the intent of the assignment, but boy these are big milestones for him!<\/p>\n
The icing on the cake came at karate today.\u00a0 As he’s walking into the dojo he notices that most of the other kids have these red sparring gloves on.\u00a0 He turns to me and says, “Oh, I forgot, we are going to start doing sparring on Wednesday and I think I need gloves today.”\u00a0 Umm… ok?!\u00a0 But guess what, he went in anyway, without the gloves and all was fine.\u00a0 They offer sparring classes on Friday and Lex hasn’t had any interest at all, though he told me later tonight that he’s kind of interested in sparring, but just doesn’t want to go to karate on Fridays.\u00a0 :)\u00a0 So anyway, I was watching the class today and they are wearing these big gloves<\/a>\u00a0and mouth guards and I’m thinking this might be the end of karate for Lex.\u00a0 After class I asked him if he wanted to stop at the office and see about buying the gear.\u00a0 He said yes!! YES!\u00a0 He wants to wear those gloves AND is willing to wear a mouth guard.\u00a0 A MOUTH GUARD!?\u00a0 Can you believe it?\u00a0 (He hasn’t actually put it in yet, so we’ll see how that goes.)\u00a0 He’s even willing to wear the rest of the sparring gear<\/a> when the class gets to that point.<\/p>\n Of course that means we have to buy all that extra gear, but hey, if he’s willing (and excited!) to wear it, I’ll buy it!<\/p>\n It’s amazing to think back to how stuck he used to get over seemingly the smallest things and how far he has come.\u00a0 It really gives me faith in his future!\u00a0 He is a pretty amazing guy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m exhausted from this working nonsense.\u00a0 I worked a whole day today, plus karate!\u00a0 Luckily there were no drum lessons this week.\u00a0 LOL!\u00a0 Before bed I wanted to write a quick post about some growing-up observations I had with Lex … Continue reading