Subtle Glow

I’m going to try to post more often. Every day if I can, even if it means some random snippet of the day. I have an account I don’t use at vox, and if all else fails there is always the question of the day.

Today’s share with the class: Report cards. Kiddo got his first letter grade report card this week. Three B’s and two C’s. Not terrible, but room for improvement.

The morning of the conference, I found a note he stuck under my door while I was getting ready. Due to the various embellishments done in colored markers around the outer margins, I could tell this note had been written at school at some point. Here is a text version of the note, but at some point I’m going to scan and save this one. I’m sure you can understand once you have read it.

Me, Kiddo and his Dad met with the teacher and talked through the report card and some other things. I do love his teacher this year. Her philosophy on teaching matches many of my own philosophies on parenting - setting the expectation and giving the responsibility to the kids, and helping to support them in managing their responsibilities. Not doing everything for them or wrestling them into doing everything “the right” way or “my way” or whatever other way requires a fight between what he wants and and what I think he needs.

I love hearing from the teachers. It’s so interesting to hear their thoughts and to recognize so much of either myself or his father in him. Things we never actively taught him, like sneaking a book under his desk and reading while the teacher is presenting (that was me). Or the endless drawings on the margins and borders of his school papers (his dad, and also me, but mine is mostly doodling). During our talk today his dad mentioned that he has seen some of Kiddo’s school papers with all the drawings all over them, and he compared those to some of the school papers he had from when HE was in fourth grade. They all had the drawings all around the page.

It’s hard to keep track of it when you’re in the thick of the day-to-day grind. But, sometimes I come across something like that catches my eye, or bends my ear and I am reminded that we totally made this little guy. He is certainly his own person but in some ways he does things because of what we passed down to him. He’s all bits of me and his dad and his own self all mashed together.
I think that is just so endlessly cool.