Babysitting, schooling, teaching...
Yesterday and today, I have Gabe. He's not in school, because he's suspended. He is not being rewarded with time with Grandpa and Grandma because he has school work to do. Only, the teachers that were supposed to email the assignments to Bekka took them to the office instead. So she had to go and pick them up yesterday afternoon, while we floundered around with the History day project.
Just trying to understand the project, and getting information from the kid who was obviously not paying attention (or maybe we weren't asking the right questions in a form that he could understand) was a reach.
Well, digging thru his binder, and with the information that Bekka got from his teacher and typed into email for me, we are off and running. We have a stack of pages from the web on the topic that are printed out so he can read them and take notes (another foreign concept that I had to explain to him).
We are on our fourth 45-minute session today of note taking. We set the timer, he reads and takes notes, and when the timer goes off we get a break. Breaks consist of being a boy and going outside and playing fetch with Rosie.
If I had to compare Gabe's personality to a dog breed, I would have to say that he is a Lab like Rosie. He is intelligent, but sit still and concentrate isn't built into his personality. This kid will be sitting quietly, and all of a sudden he's making noises, shifting around, getting up, perusing the refrigerator with the doors open, looking for a snack.
Like Rosie, he can sit for a treat, but his attention span is limited.
I've already raised one kid like this, and he was 13 before he could sit all day in class. Gabe has a couple of years to go yet.
And I don't understand why the school system thinks that suspending kids is going to help them make better choices. Sometimes the suspension is just a reward to the kid for misbehaving. Just ask Molly who thinks it's unfair that Gabe is spending Thursday and Friday with me.
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