Lenten Post #2

Does sacrificing the beloved mommy board and Facebook for Lent count for anything if I instead use this blog as a palate for the brush strokes and spatters of thought that bubble through my brain every day? 

Unrelated: My use of brush, bubble and brain in one sentence hearkens to a Twitter post by everyone’s favorite seventeen year old bride.  Sorry about that.

So.

Parenting in the age of the interwebs means I no longer have to wait for a report card to gauge the girls’ progress in school, and earlier this week, I came across a ”B”.  Stop rolling your eyes.  This helicopter mama is just getting her rotors turning. 

A “B” is not a horrible grade; a “B” is a very solid respectable grade.  However, certain of my children who shall remain anonymous can absolutely do better, and has done better through the course of the year.  A ten point drop needs some explanation.  So the requisite email was fired off, and in response I found that said child has problems staying on task.  Her attention wanders easily, and although she readily absorbs and understands information, has no interest in evidencing that fact.  Case in point, over the course of six trips to the library, she managed to produce a whole four sentences of biographical information about one John Sutter.  “He was born. He built a mill. There was some gold. He died.”?  However, when pressed, she had no problem waxing eloquent about the man’s 77 years on this planet.

So last night we gently tried to get to the root of the problem – and met the Great Wall of There’s Nothing Wrong.  And then, a breakthrough.

“There’s too much noise in the classroom.”

You mean like talking?

“No, people shuffle their feet too much.”

Oh. Dear.

Yours truly may or may not have nearly had a recent nervous breakdown listening to a co-worker’s bare feet slap against the soles of her sandals (there I go again with the Stoddenism) whilst innocently going about her business.  The sound of her foot coming unstuck particularly set on teeth on edge and my mind to wandering about icky foot things.  I am similarly unable to listen to just about anyone eat cereal, Rob sip soup or my mother chew a granola bar.

Sorry, Mom.

I’ve not mentioned these things to the wee one, or really to anyone – quite frankly they’re persnickety and weird, and I get that.

However, it would seem that in addition to a flair for the dramatic, a love of slamming doors and eating chocolate (either together or as separate activities), a refusal to share my feelings and an obsession with the movie Twister, I have passed one more personality quirk onto that poor defenseless child.

At least she got her father’s hair.