Saturday, November 14, 2009

Sins of the Father...or the Mother?

Perfectionism. It's not all bad, right? As a friend of mine mentioned just recently, we'd like our doctor and our accountant to be perfectionists. But when your ten year old is paralyzed by his tendencies, then it's not a good thing.
My sweet little YellowFellow hates school. It's been a struggle every day this year to get him to go. "MythroathurtsmyheadhurstmytummyhurtsIdon'tfeelgoodcanIstayhomepleasejustthisonce". It's exhausting. Granted, his allergies have been a killer this year. I know because I share them. So I've tried the, "We're in this together kid" strategy. The "Who has the Best Booger" contest. The who can whine the loudest or who can come up with the best explanation for the goop on your throat that just can't be hacked up or swallowed or described to anyone who doesn't have it contest. I've kept him drugged up on Claritin and Tylenol. And all along I've looked for THE root of it all. WHAT is it about going to school that he loathes so much. Is it PE again? He's a sensitive kid, and if he gets the rules wrong or, or gets hurt, he cries and gets teased, and his coach last year, was well, a football coach and didn't quite respond to him the way say, his mother would, which produced MORE tears and started the cycle all over again. But this wasn't just Wednesday. It was every day. So I ASKED him. "Mom, it's just so hard. I want to do my best for the Lord, and I know my best is 100% with ALL the extra credit, and when I don't get that, I get really upset." So I have to think of the THE best sentence. And make all my letters just right. And I get distracted. And all the other kids finish and go out to recess, but I have to finish, so I miss recess, and then I have to bring it home. (We've been struggling with hours of homework every night. She doesn't assign specific homework. It's just to finish what doesn't get done in class.) So now I know his problem. He's a perfectionist. Where does that come from?
He got it from me. I'm a perfectionist too. You hadn't noticed? This blog is the perfect example. It was supposed to be a place for me to practice writing. Just throw it out there in cyber space for people to comment on so that I could get better. But what ended up happening was that I'd start a post and then edit it to death before posting. And I have many that I've never posted. Why? Well because they're not my best work. They're not good enough. I don't want anyone to read them. Which brings me around to the title. In the parent teacher conference the Engineer and I had with YellowBoy's teacher last week, she mentioned that perhaps that verse about the sins of the father being visited up the future generations (resisting perfectionist tendencies to use my concordance and look up the specific reference and post that...not easy...) referred to sinful tendencies as well. That what we struggle with is perhaps passed on to our children. Poor kid got this from me.
So today I'm doing something to help him. I'm posting for the first time since August. And I'm not editing.
After all, if I can't work on my bad habits, how can I expect my ten year old to work on his.