A Lisa, Or A Bart...

Call #5 from Max’s math teacher today in the 6 days. This boy has a serious issue with authority, specifically women in authority. Isn’t that nice, he’s got this strong independent female as his mother….but some how, that’s still undermined by our culture…and probably his father and grandfather in some way. Effers. Ok, I should probably not go off on that rant.

As soon as he doesn’t ‘like’ a teacher, he just digs his heels in and expects the world to figure it out because he’s not budging. My patience level with him this past week on the whole math thing has reached its peak. Kid is facing summer school and he STILL fights it every single way. I already helped him out of a situation with a teacher he didn’t ‘like’ earlier this year and allowed him to drop the class. Now he’s asking me to help change his math teacher, because she is ‘mean’ and so on and so forth, the same shit I’ve been hearing from him since 5th grade. Every semester it’s a different teacher, he always picks at least one to totally dislike and take on. This isn’t new; this has been his nature since about 2nd grade. I think he is a Taurus, not a Virgo.

It’s so frustrating. What do you do with a kid that basically just refuses to try? He’s failing this class. He’s been failing it all year, we’ve tried to get him tutoring after school and he ‘forgets’ to go. He does nothing but fight me when I try to help him and gets very frustrated. He feels he’s so far behind that he’s not even going to try. He told me that today when I confronted him. He shows up purposefully without his supplies and then tells his teacher (this is classic) that I don’t buy him school supplies and that’s why he doesn’t have what he needs. Ms. Hecox calls me today saying, will you please BUY Max some school supplies….like I’m the reason he doesn’t have school supplies. I just bought him school supplies at the 1st of the year, plenty….enough for the whole school year. I asked his math teacher if Max has been showing up with supplies since the beginning of the year, she said…until last Monday. He told me that his ‘friends’ and him got into a paper fight (?) in the bathroom and his math notebook got destroyed. This happened a week ago, not a word was said to me. I even asked him if he had homework during the week….”Nope, we have CSAP this week” welllllllllllll….he DID have CSAP (standardized testing) but he still had homework to be completed by today, over the weekend…I just found out today.

But he couldn’t do his homework this weekend because he didn’t have any school supplies. Because his worthless mother doesn’t buy school supplies for her son. Poor little guy, man has he got it rough! It’s pretty obvious how neglected and abused he is at home I’m sure.

Now I know why Homer Simpson strangles his children.

The current theory with everyone we are working with is that Max may just have to crash and burn to figure this out, he may just have to go to summer school and if so….oh well. He is 14 for cripes sake. He is old enough to do is homework, show up to class with a freaking pencil and paper and everyone on the planet knows he’s a bright kid. Not a single soul questions whether or not he can do the work, he’s full capable….but you know the line, “He can do the work, he’s just not applying himself.” I almost screamed at the first teacher to give ME that line. I just looked at her and the images of the 10 billion teachers before her that had used that line on my mother and a million mothers before me flashed before my eyes. I mean, we KNOW that is what’s going on, maybe there’s a newer, more modern and original way of saying “Hey, your kid is distracted and we’ve got to figure it out or he/she is gonna blow it totally.”

And high school….oh boy, I mean high school is not forgiving in any way. And he goes on and on and on about his drivers license. I’m like HA…you think your getting a drivers license with those grades? Think again Mr. Man. And if you think you can get it without my permission, you are sadly mistaken. He was recently quite distressed to learn that news, which he had to verify with someone else b/c you know…I’m totally full of shit.

If I had the money, I’d stick his ass in private alternative school immediately. I’m terribly concerned about these next few years of school. He’s got the foundation, a loving family, a ton of support…we are getting him a private tutor….it’s up to him. Right?

I wish I could say that I was comfortable with just letting it be, living within my spirit and knowing that it’s up to him, that he’ll be protected…that he can get through this and he’s got to do a lot of it on his own.

The truth is, I worry endlessly. Every night I sit there and think….what has to happen for this kid to get this under control? What more can I do? How many more times do I need to communicate with the teachers? As much as it takes, I know.

At what point in life do you have to take a step back and let these kids figure it out on their own? This could very well be all my fault in the first place, for not giving him the skills to be independent….to function in the world, to be capable…

The fact that children come with no manual and really you are left out in the cold as a parent with all you know from what the world has taught you about being a parent…and a child…has got to be the biggest pile of steaming bullshit on the face of the planet. It is simply not fair that we all want better for our children but don’t know always know how to make that happen. It’s also not fair that you can’t like go back a few years and change this or that…I wish I lived on an episode of Bewitched. I always thought I’d make a much better Samantha anyway.

We’ve come too far to blow it now; I want so much for him. I want him to not have to work so hard in life to succeed and to know that life can be fun and not end up a statistic of a young, teen mother.

Even Homer Simpson who strangles his kids has brilliant, studious little Lisa Simpson…what does it all mean? That you can struggle and work hard and still end up with a Bart OR you can be a total looser of a parent and still end up with a Lisa? The grand question mark of parenting, yes?

Whether I have a Lisa or a Bart, I love him either way...I just wish I hadn't infected him with my 'difficult life' germ, I'd wanted so badly for him to be immunized against that when he was born...but I guess they don't give that to kids on Medicaid born to homeless 16 year old in California. Sucks for him eh?