Victories of the Weekend
I pretty much told my son that we would be working on the Civics paper this weekend. I laid out the plan of action & said we'd be spending our whole time doing it.
We did. I can see why & how he has a block with writing. Although he understands & can talk about the materials, he has a hard time mentally organizing his thoughts into a structure & then coming up with the wording. So I drew up an outline & walked him through it & kind of pulled phrases/sentences out of him. Right now, it's all typed up, except for one citation on the bibliography, which I need to get from him tonight. And he's doing the PowerPoint part.
I'm hoping that this experience will help him come to me earlier in the process for help; then he can have more time to come up with the words & everything. In his defense though, I had explained the project to one of our attorneys at work. She was shocked! She once taught at a law school & said it sounded like a project she'd assign to her students! So I'm not crazy in thinking that this teacher is asking way too much from a class full of co-taught kids.
Anyhow, the victory is only partly in completing the project--a lot of it is in the fact that he actually let me help him & didn't push me away. And I didn't let his initial reluctance to do the work get me mad. We just powered through it.
Another victory in the boundaries arena: that email I wrote to the head deacon & coach--the deacon sent me an email back, asking me to re-consider not attending the meetings, that I had a lot of good stuff to say (which is nice to hear, but...), etc. I didn't respond to that email, since I was going to see him in church the next day. But I did stress about it somewhat. I did pray about it, saying that if God wanted me to do these meetings, make it abundantly clear to me! When I woke up the next morning, the word in my head was, "No!" So when the deacon came up to me, I was all ready for an argument/guilt trip or whatever. Didn't happen that way. He just said that he didn't want me to think that I could not participate since I wasn't a leader & understood if I had a problem with the time commitment or something else. I told him that I understood I could participate & that it was a problem with both the time commitment & other factors. And he was cool with that. Yes!!!
Read Chapter 2 of "Thriving..." It talked about the root of difficult marriages being in: 1-the disappointement of not receiving what you expected, 2-the disappointement of what you're willing to give not being received, and 3-something else that I'm forgetting! But it did focus on first defining 1&2 for ourselves, so I'll be thinking of that. This book is really focused on the spiritual dimension of marriage, which is interesting.
We did. I can see why & how he has a block with writing. Although he understands & can talk about the materials, he has a hard time mentally organizing his thoughts into a structure & then coming up with the wording. So I drew up an outline & walked him through it & kind of pulled phrases/sentences out of him. Right now, it's all typed up, except for one citation on the bibliography, which I need to get from him tonight. And he's doing the PowerPoint part.
I'm hoping that this experience will help him come to me earlier in the process for help; then he can have more time to come up with the words & everything. In his defense though, I had explained the project to one of our attorneys at work. She was shocked! She once taught at a law school & said it sounded like a project she'd assign to her students! So I'm not crazy in thinking that this teacher is asking way too much from a class full of co-taught kids.
Anyhow, the victory is only partly in completing the project--a lot of it is in the fact that he actually let me help him & didn't push me away. And I didn't let his initial reluctance to do the work get me mad. We just powered through it.
Another victory in the boundaries arena: that email I wrote to the head deacon & coach--the deacon sent me an email back, asking me to re-consider not attending the meetings, that I had a lot of good stuff to say (which is nice to hear, but...), etc. I didn't respond to that email, since I was going to see him in church the next day. But I did stress about it somewhat. I did pray about it, saying that if God wanted me to do these meetings, make it abundantly clear to me! When I woke up the next morning, the word in my head was, "No!" So when the deacon came up to me, I was all ready for an argument/guilt trip or whatever. Didn't happen that way. He just said that he didn't want me to think that I could not participate since I wasn't a leader & understood if I had a problem with the time commitment or something else. I told him that I understood I could participate & that it was a problem with both the time commitment & other factors. And he was cool with that. Yes!!!
Read Chapter 2 of "Thriving..." It talked about the root of difficult marriages being in: 1-the disappointement of not receiving what you expected, 2-the disappointement of what you're willing to give not being received, and 3-something else that I'm forgetting! But it did focus on first defining 1&2 for ourselves, so I'll be thinking of that. This book is really focused on the spiritual dimension of marriage, which is interesting.
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