“I want to EXIT school, I want to QUIT it” moans Patrick, who has the vocabulary of a child who has clearly spent too long playing computer games.
ESCAPE, ESCAPE, Abort! In his head he thinks he should be able to close down that particular window called school and just not do it anymore. He claims he has a headache and can't go. He is irrationally upset about having to go to school. He is still only 5 and has already been there a year and a half. He blames me;
“You make me go nearly every day!”
How could I? It is clearly completely unreasonable, and he just wants to stay at home. He doesn’t want to do PE or Phonics or Numeracy. He hates having to work so hard, although we're told he is extremely studious. He has told us and the teachers, “I am just getting worser and worser (at writing in particular).” He only likes break time.
I let him have a day off recently, he was more just tired than ill really. I decided I’d home school him for the day and he’d soon feel that school was the better option. He did do some work with me but it was a painful process and the little we did do was not done without complaint. (One task was painting the letters of the alphabet so I was not exactly pushing him.) He recollected later – “You never gave me break time!” As I remember it, we did not much more than an hour and he played at home all afternoon while I went out with Rachel. Home schooling is definitely not an option.
He is extra sensitive and upset by minor things at the moment. He told me that a boy in his class “said my prayer was rubbish and hurt my feelings.”
I blame Mark for the anti-school genes. He hated his first school and his Mum told me the Headmaster used to have to come and fetch Mark from their house as he’d just sit in his room and pick off all the wallpaper in protest.
Patrick has friends and is fairly popular despite the fact he turns down every party invitation he receives. Recently, he was due to go on a play-date after school, but he bailed at the classroom door and decided he did not want to go home with them after all. I felt he shouldn’t disappoint his friend so I went over to talk to him about it all and persuade him to go. Eventually Patrick decided that the one thing that would make all the difference to him was if he could have his DS ‘fully charged’, to take with him. As, is always the case, I knew Patrick would be fine once he got there, and in all likelihood would not need the emotional crutch of the DS. I lavishly promised him I would go home, find it and drop it off on our way to ballet and he went off happily.
I now had a quandary. There was a) the fact I didn’t actually want him to have his DS, I’d rather he played with his friend. (I find the DS anti social, it would only end up with the other child watching Patrick play it and b) I thought I was pandering to him too much. However, if I didn’t take the DS to him, Patrick would think I just lie to him and pack him off and he will never trust me again.
I went for the 'risk he’d never trust me again' option, with a get out clause of a text to his friend’s Mum to say I couldn’t find it, which in fact I genuinely couldn’t.
He had a fab time and as we drove away he said “I miss Elliot’s house.” I apologised for letting him down about the DS which prompted him to say he thought he might have had a bit better time if he’d had that too. I ignored that. He’d never have discovered the delights of the inflatable green frog he played with there if he’d been glued to that little screen of his.
It is quite a boy obsession; TV, computers, Wiis, handhelds. Ben was 3 when he told me ‘all the best things in life involve a screen.’ It did make me wonder what kind of a childhood I was giving him if he thought that.
Although the computer obsession continues, thankfully Patrick's anti-school phase seems to have passed now, for the time being at any rate.
Computers aren't Patrick's only interest. When asked recently what was his favourite sport he replied nonchalantly; "Just getting cooler and cooler."
In actual fact Patrick is distinctly uncool, wearing his trousers high riding, and everything tucked in, his trousers too short and his zip up hoodie three sizes too small. Unless it is some geek chic I am missing here. It doesn't sit too well with his other image, which is gelled hair, self styled, spiky or mohican, and his skin tight Transformer costume. I think maybe in his case it is just geek.
No comments:
Post a Comment