On rare occasion, when he’s deeply upset with me and wants to strike at the core of my being, my son Adam, who is in grade 5, will say something like this: “I don’t care what you think. I’m not a perfect child. I am who I am.”
He sobbed and shouted these words at me early Sunday evening, after I criticized his careless revision of a writing assignment. The circumstances were more complicated, of course. I had spent some time with him earlier in the day, trying to guide him to his own conclusions about his homework. There was a soft shroud of outside pressure too, following a recent writing assessment at school that was lower than usual. Adam is an advanced reader, and a witty and warm prankster. But he struggles with how to tell a story on paper, and at this point in his schooling, his teachers are looking for more craft—especially in revising (and he hates to revise).
So he was tired from so much writing, and thinking about writing, and when I called him out on another careless revise, he blew.
Sometimes parenting can feel like delicate precision work. When to push? When to praise? Either way, how much is too much?
As you can imagine, writing is something I have opinions about. In the case of my son, I feel like the writing is still gestating, and that this may be a case where I need to yield a bit to time, development, and desire.
The other context here is the implementation of Common Core standards. I don’t mean this note to sound off for or against them. But I could imagine there still might be some tinkering to be done to make sure the standards are in line with child development and potential.
Ah, but when he cries like the world is ending, and combines it with the notion that I think he needs to be the perfect child (with the unsaid corollary that I don’t love him for who he is, and furthermore, that I think he’s stupid), it kills me to see him in such pain—and I worry that he’s going to be plagued by self-pity as a young adult.
The next day, when I came home from work, I turned the spigot on to full affection because that’s what he and I needed.
But I’m planning to still win the war on writing.
Eric Messinger is the editor of New York Family. He can be reached at emessinger@manhattanmedia.com.
