Learning and pimping... It ain't Easy....

I am an active parent.  I am protective, supportive, encouraging and super motivated to encourage him to be the best he can be and model that as best and as much as I can.  I do not rely on the school to teach my child.  I rely on them to support our family in his educational needs.  I seek outside professionals for important therapies that my child needs that will help him be able to learn.  Things he doesn't get at school or at home, I seek out for him because I recognize it is important.   I struggle along with him (and because of him) to engage his little mind in learning when I see the strain in his eyes, the taxing demand on his ability and the defeatist attitude he assumes.  Learning is not easy.

Let me repeat that ... Learning is not easy.  (Neither is pimping ~ have you heard that song recently?).
Especially when learning also requires you to sit relatively still, to listen and follow multi-level instructions, to follow along on worksheets that are busy while sitting in a classroom of peers, to be active and attentive for large portions of the day and do it all while fighting the noises, smells and movements of others as well as the deeply seated drive in your body to engage all your gross motors in wiggling, moving and generally fidgeting.  Learning is developing a building block, a foundation, for the next thing.

But what if that foundation kept crumbling and you had to fix it before you could add to it?  And what if it was hard to fix it because the pressure you put on it caused it to crack.  Or the tools you needed to use were so loud you had to find your headphones and while you were looking for them you lost your hammer so you had to look for that.  And when you had yourself together, you remembered you really had to go to the bathroom.  Finally, you are ready to fix the crack and move on to something else but now that crack has totally crumbled and you just throw the hammer at it and push it all the way down.  Now you can't add anything else to it because you have to start over. THAT is how my child is learning.  Some days it may just be a little crack while other days the whole side of the building caved in over night and it has to be fixed before we can add more to it.

That being said, I send him to school with the greatest teacher and all the "tools" I can afford for the success of his day.  I help him at home for long periods of time with reading and writing.  We engage every sense in every way to learn.  We try and we cry.  Because we believe his education is important.  I also engage my little guy in amazing extra activities based upon his interests and abilities.  I open doors for him to participate in programs and interact with peers so that he can learn and grow socially and emotionally as well as physically and educationally.  I encourage his uniqueness and his ability to make individual choices even when I disagree.  Learning takes place in more than just the school... it can take place on a field or at the roller rink.  And for us it often does.

And yet through all of my encouragement and support I am astutely aware of age and ability appropriateness.  Perhaps because I am so aware of our challenges and successes I am curiously just upset by a series of occurrences in which materials were brought home from school that (in my opinion) should not have been allowed.  I have tried to remove my self from the situation and see it from a different view.  I would still be curiously bothered.  Material not appropriate for a child at the age of 6 ~ but a child who struggles to read and learn.

The problem is that this is material HE was ALLOWED TO CHOOSE.  There is not a section or area of appropriate material for a 6 year old, or 8 year old or 12 year old. There is free choice.  And I do not disagree that children should have choice BUT I think some boundaries need to be put in place.  For curious reasons, the fact is that repeatedly my child has used his CHOICE and brought home materials that were not age appropriate, he has not the slightest ability to actually read and the reason he gives me is simply because he has free choice.  Because it has happened so frequently (more than the 3 books I have pictured here), I have oddly lost my patience with it.

I do not believe having this ability to choose these books promotes literature or reading.  It does not encourage my child to read.  And if I attempt to read these to him, he has no desire to listen because the content is also not engaging for a 6 year old.  Free choice for a child like mine opens up a whole new foundation problem (if we refer back to the building reference).  Free choice often means he will do what ever he can to push the limit of the boundary.  Like if I walk him down the candy isle and allow him to choose one candy he will scan the whole isle several times and choose the LARGEST bag/package even if he doesn't like it and want that one because it is his choice and he wants the biggest.  So free choice in selecting material to bring home is just about grabbing something that looks hard or is big and fat or heavy... these have all been reasons he gives me for bringing home the books.

The weirdness is that I am a pretty open minded mom... YET ~ I would not take him to a video store and allow him to purchase Grand Theft Auto.  Nor do I allow him to watch The Family Guy on tv.  Nor do I take him to see movies at the theater or home that are above his ability to understand and process.  Nor do we allow him to watch much news because the fact is so much murder and mayhem make him anxious.  Nor would I go to the public library and allow him to rent a book from the young adult section.  Sure he has the ABILITY to play, watch or look at all of these... but there is nothing appropriate about allowing him.  My feelings apply in regards to the materials he has brought home over the last 4 months.  It is just not ok.

I have spoken to the appropriate people.  I have spoken at length to my son.   And yet when he gets the chance the next time, he will do the same thing.  He is like that.  Maybe like my kind husband encourages ..  I should just stop letting it get to me ~ who cares it is just a book, you don't have to read it ~ is his attitude.  And now maybe I will.  I have done what I can and I can just leave them in the backpack and forge on.

** Please do not interpret this as an attack on anyone.  It is not.  Nor is it a picture of my relationship with anyone.  It is a situation that has gotten me all agitated and because generally the response is to tell me I am over reacting when I do not think so.  I just needed to cleanse my mind of this strange occurrence and THIS my friends is how I do it... Move on now people... **