First, Gabriel's teacher. This time, Gabriel joined us. The teacher did most of the talking, and clearly wasn't concerned about Gabriel's ability, but did talk a lot about his transitions and planning. Indeed, Gabriel is often cramming his work into the last few minutes. Just like me -- works better under pressure.
Friday in particular was strange because the night before, I discovered that Gabriel was way, way, way behind on his week's homework, and had a report due that he'd had for 2 weeks. Thursday night was a serious struggle, with Gabriel gridlocked and refusing to do anything because he could see he couldn't get it all done and was overwhelmed. Clearly we need to keep closer tabs on his work during the week.
Julian's conference was quite different. We spent maybe 3 minutes on how he's doing in school -- not much to say about that, it's clear he's completely capable. Most of the conversation was about his behavior and keeping him focused and not disrupting the class. Ironically, since Friday, Julian has kicked into "angel" mode and he's been pretty good!
But Sunday was horrendous. Gabriel had to catch up on all that work he was behind on, and I'd let him go to Katrina's party on Saturday with the promise he'd catch up Sunday. So after breakfast and some reading, at 10am I told him to go into his room and get to work. All he did was procrastinate and complain and delay. It was a day of constant conflict. I'd written a list of the work he had to do, which at one point he tore up into tiny pieces and I had to insist he pick up all the pieces. By 6pm he hadn't done any work at all, and I'd taken away just about everything he had in the room. Finally, he overheard that Julian and Katrina were going to watch a movie if they got all the rooms picked up, and he kicked into gear. It took an hour and a half, but he pulled it off.
During this colossal struggle, I was upstairs all day myself, finishing up my closet project. I'm thrilled that I got rid of a lot of clothes! Can't tell from the photo, but these bags filled the back of my car.
Tonight I insisted Gabriel do some work on his weekly work due Friday, another major struggle. But I'm too traumatized from last Thursday night's struggle, Friday's teacher conference and Sunday's all-day-long conflict to let that go. I won, he wrote the 5 definitions I insisted on.
Dave was out to dinner tonight, I got everyone's homework done and everyone to bed, in my second week of a new job, and got all outstanding laundry done. Seems I work better under pressure too!
10/11/11
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