Lessons everywhere

I work from home once a week which I am eternally grateful for, it took me a long time to get to the place where I knew that I was worthy of this request.

I have come to love working from home and Tuesday are my favourite days.  The opportunity to work from home allows me to strengthen my relationship with Jordy and his teachers.  I take and pick Jordy up from school and just this year my in-laws have agreed to look after the twins on Tuesdays as well. 

A few Tuesdays ago I picked Jordy up from school and his teacher came out to tell me that he had been acting up in class.  That is wriggling on the floor and not listening.  Jordan even got that upset that he crawled under the table in anger and no amount of coaxing would make Jordan budge.

This is not the first time this situation has occurred and deep down I knew, just knew that I had not healed this situation for myself and that is why it was coming up again.  I knew that this was both our issues but is was more about me rather than Jordan.  So I tried a different tact.

On the way home from school I kept quiet, I was not angry at Jordan I was attempting to be open to my feelings so that I could approach it in a positive manner.  I did tell Jordy that we would be talking about what happened at school that day.  We have recently introduced a “talking rock” which was recommended by my awesome kinesiologist.  It is a Rose quartz and we cleanse it after each use.

We sat on the couch facing each other and I started asking Jordy questions about what happened.  Basically Jordy got up twice to put items away, once in his tub and the other time in his bag.  All the teacher saw was Jordy running here and there.  The teacher asked Jordy to sit on the floor (as punishment) and Jordy did but his friend asked him to come over to talk, so the teacher saw that Jordy had not listened and raised his voice.

Jordy told me he felt that it was unfair that he got into trouble when there were other kids in the class that were mucking around and didn’t get into trouble; this is what made Jordy upset and crawl under the table.

I patiently listened to what he had to say and then it was my turn to hold the “talking rock”.  I started by saying how I completely understood what he said to me and that the reason he wanted to put something in his tub and bag was to ensure that he didn’t forget it.  This is what I do, I do things NOW before I forget, but I live too much in my mind (whole other post on that one).  I then told him how I understood how frustrating it would be to feel as though the teacher was picking on you when your other friends get away with mucking around.

This is where my healing came in because I then asked Jordy to imagine being the Teacher Mr Sebestyen the Grade 2 Teacher.  I then asked him to imagine a classroom of 27 kids and it was the day to give out the spelling words for the week.  Mr Sebestyen is writing the spelling words on the whiteboard and turns around to talk to the class  and there is Thomas running to his tub.  You think nothing of it and go back to the board but the next time you turn around Thomas is running back from his bag.  You ask Thomas to sit on the floor because this is learning time and not running time and running between tables is disruptive to the other students. 

You trust Thomas to listen to you because you know that he is a good kid but the next time you turn around Thomas is talking to his friend and this makes you quiet upset. So you raise your voice to Thomas and you are shocked when you see that Thomas has crawled under a table.

Jordy was very shocked with my story because he now understood what it looked like to be in the teachers shoes.  So I then started asking Jordy some questions, what do you think the teacher would say if you had “asked” to put things in your tub and bag giving him the reason that you didn’t want to forget.  He couldn’t answer. I said that the teacher would either say “no not right now” or” yes Jordan you can do that now”.  But until and unless you ask the teacher cannot read your mind and understand what your intention was.

I worked from home the next day and went to pick Jordy up from school.  The teacher told me that this boy was completely different from the previous day and he was amazed at what I had done.  I told him it was not me but all Jordy.

On the way home Jordy was so excited and happy about his day.  I was saying to him that he had a choice, we could both be like we were yesterday slumped in our chairs, sad and silent; OR we could be so happy that you want to jump up and down from the excitement.  We spoke about the differences in the day and how Jordy participated in the Class room, helped the teacher, answered the questions and how much more fun his day was.  I was so happy for him because it was all him.  He did this change, not me I just provided the different sides to look from.

The best thing my son said to me was “Mummy I want to be happy everyday at school".