Well, if you were anywhere in the general vicinity of Texas today, you probably heard the battle between my middle schooler and me. It was loud. And ugly. There was yelling and screaming and paper ripping and drooling and gagging and tons of crying.
And I just stared at him, making a fool of himself, not even wanting to laugh (which is abnormal) because I was so horrified at this massive hissy fit I was witnessing.
A little over a week ago, his math class was given an assignment. The assignment was to make a creative book of vocabulary words. There were 20 words and she wanted them to make it neat and creative. Sounds easy, right? Well...N got it into his head that he had over two weeks to work on it, so when he came home from school today, he admitted to having yet another late assignment, and when he told me it was the vocabulary book, I got pissed.
I reminded him when it was due no less than three times, when I got email reminders. He gets the same reminders. So, he zipped through it, pleased with his work. He was less than pleased when I told him he was going to redo it. He was missing one of the words, and kept getting so frustrated with me because I was calling them "terms" not "vocab words." Um, newsflash. Same. Thing.
We went round and round, and I finally got this beast that didn't even resemble my child to email his teacher. Only I thought he might break the computer with all of the anger radiating through his body, so I told him to tell me what to type. She responded within the hour, and by that time, I had set him up with a new vocabulary book.
Oh, I also fed him. It turns out kids turn into mutant zombies who hate the world if they're starving within an inch of their lives. Nevermind the whole "snack after school" thing. That's strictly for amateurs.
He shot me the dirtiest looks imaginable as he re-wrote his vocabulary words, three to a page, complete with examples...you know, to make it creative. I'm not a miracle worker, okay? He finished, and begged to go to bed. The time? 7:55. And that's when I felt his forehead to make sure he wasn't sick.
He never acts this way...ever. Unless he's sick. And I can count the number of times he's been sick on one hand. I just knocked on every wooden surface in my living room, thank you very much.
Anyway, just in case you were wondering what the ruckus was all about, from Dallas to the panhandle, to the extreme Southern tip of Texas...it was just me and N...and I was just reminding him that moms totally hold all of the power to make kids redo assignments just because they can. And will. Especially when a lesson is to be learned.
Aubs
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