You all know that I am an advocate of Free Range Parenting. Letting the kids do stuff, without constant supervision. To a large extent, that has mainly involved play. Let them run back and forth to the neighborhood store, go down to the park to play. But as they grow older it also involves other, more serious, things.
Last night Danny had his first official Boy Scout meeting. He was pretty excited about it. And proud to be a Boy Scout now. But along with that comes responsibility. We need to loosen our hold and supervision of things like hanging up his uniform, performing projects, working on merit badges. Because this is on him now. Yes, the boys do a lot of work in Cub Scouts, but there is a constant adult participation. But that ends now, we will get him to the meetings on time, and pick him up. But he is on his own now.
The transition to Online school has not gone as well as we might have hoped for number one son. For a variety of reasons, he has fallen behind, not done the work, whatever. And we have a choice, we can dive in, go over every assignment, watch him do them, help edit them. Or we can accept that he is in 8th grade, he made this choice for the online schooling. He committed to doing the work on his own. And he claims he is ready to do it this way.
After some conflict last week, I made my choice. I told him this morning that his grades are in trouble. That he has messed this up. Playing games when he should have been doing school work. And that it is up to him now to get himself out of it. He needs to meet with each of his teachers, come up with a plan, and try to salvage things. And then make sure this does not happen again.
That sure isn’t easy to do. We have reached out to him. tried to set up plans to help him. He knows he has a lot of tools and resources. And it is not a question of being unable to do the work. He has just chosen not to do it. And we cannot do it for him. So now he has a limited time to recover. And then he will face consequences. It is as simple as that.
It’s not easy to sit back and watch this process. And I know that my own parents went through this with me, being the indifferent student. There are a lot more tools now to monitor the day to day progress. Just as there are a lot more diversions. So we could micro-manage his school work. Or we could accept that he is in 8th grade and it is time for him to learn that actions have consequences, and his parents are not going to step in and rescue him every time he digs a hole.
freerangegeek 