Great day... or, Whew!

Since my last post, George continued to have a rough time. He had been unfocused and disconnected from pretty much all of his work, and from most of the authority figures in his life as well. I thought that maybe he was in fact overworked; after all, everyone else (including me, his step-dad who is a teacher, and his step-siblings, who go to school) had gotten a spring break, but I worked him straight through. So, I gave in to his request for a little break, and suspended his online math class for a couple of weeks, hoping to take some pressure off of him. It didn't help.

All he wanted to do every day was play in his room or read, and we were power-struggling all the time to get him to accomplish just about anything on his daily schedule. This was both hugely annoying and disappointing to me. I am new at this full-time homeschooling thing, and was starting to worry that it was all a big mistake. That I had signed myself up for an endless, massive headache. That this was going to ruin my relationship with my son. That I should force him to go back to school, where he was woefully under-stimulated and was so miserable, but at least he was someone else's problem all day long. (Ouch!) Just when I had all but given up hope of ever again seeing those happy, halcyon homeschooling days of when we had first started, my semester ended, and our first free Tuesday came around.

Well, it wasn't to have been a free Tuesday for me--I was supposed to go to campus in the morning and pick up a set of final papers that I had planned to spend the day grading. But something in me (inner procrastinator or parental genius?) decided that the work could wait. If I didn't pick up those papers I would have absolutely nothing to do all day but focus on George, who really hadn't had my undivided attention for a substantial portion of the day in I-don't-know-how-long.

After our usual struggle, he got his work and chores done pretty early, and I suggested we go to the park for a tennis lesson. To my great surprise (I thought he'd want to stay in his room all day again), the response was a very enthusiastic yes! When we got out on the court, wow! It was like I had my son back. Gone was the droopy, floppy, whiny boy I had seen so much of lately, and in his place was an energetic, joyful, attentive kid. He was having the time of his life. You might think this is because he is starved for physical activity or something, but that's not the case. I think it's that he finally had my full, undivided, and ungrumpy attention.

After tennis, we spent the rest of the afternoon at the park, running around, on the playground, and such. He was delighted and kind of shocked that I agreed to push him on the tire swing--and I realized that over the last few months I truly have not been able to be there for him the way I wish I could; I am around a lot, but I'm always busy. Anyway, I was feeling a connection to him that had really been missing lately, and I could see his old happy, cooperative, wonderful self returning. Swept up in the joy of the moment, I suggested we go on the regular swings, where we could swing side-by-side. Higher and higher we swung, laughing and talking and having a ball... until I was overcome with a sudden wave of motion-sickness! Our day at the park was over at that point, but I took George for some ice cream before heading home.

I'm hopeful that this will not have been a great day in isolation, that now that we've reestablished this connection, we've reached a turning point and will find that we're back to smoother sailing in general. I'll let ya know.