Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Unrealistic Expectations for First Graders

"How can we harm our environment? Use evidence from 'The Lorax 'and 'The Wump World' to support your answer."

No this isn't a prompt for my Environmental History class. This is Professors's school work. Why in the world would you ask this of kids still learning to read and write in sentences? I'd need at least 5 pages to answer this question properly. No wonder Professor shuts down in school. He is either bored out of his mind or struggling to keep up. Not to mention he has dsygraphia and gets extremely discouraged two words into a sentence so much so that he loses sight of what he is supposed to be writing about. The audacity of putting a failing grade on this just kills me. What is the point? Why hurt a child's self-esteem when there is a learning disorder that needs to be addressed and you've just set him up for failure? I am so glad that he will be changing schools in January.

Murphy's Pre-Thanksgiving Visit to the Wilson Household

So far this morning I have:

Turned off my alarm in my sleep causing me to oversleep by half an hour.

Missed shampoo in my hair and had to turn the shower back on.

Tripped over my 80lb dog at least 20 times because she WON'T STOP FOLLOWING ME!

Professor couldn't find his shoes (mostly because he was staring at the TV instead of actually looking).

Professor's seat belt managed to do that thing where it was both locked and twisted too much to feed it back in.

He then freaked out about it.

The house smells bad.

I took the trash out (cause of the aforementioned stinkyness) and managed to get the bag stuck on the dog gate, tearing it and getting cat litter in the living room.

I took the trash can lid off and it landed in a huge puddle.


I have only been awake for 75 minutes! I have resorted to closing the dog out of my room and hoping Murphy forgets I'm here. What a terrible houseguest.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

The Twilight Zone of Parenting

Some days I honestly feel like I'm living in some sort of bizarre twilight zone story when it comes to Professor. Sometimes I think I would be at a loss of how to interact with a typical kid. Before bed this evening Professor and I discussed the concept of multiverses. I used the example of Shrodinger's cat to explain the moment when there would be an obvious split under the multiverse theory (i.e. the moment of observation). Not only was this something Professor was familiar with but it helped him better understand the concept. Shrodinger's cat and time-space theories are the bread and butter of my daily life. I know that Professor isn't the first or only bright kid but it is hard to argue that he isn't something special. I'll admit that I revel in the strangeness of it all, that is when I'm not having a panic attack over it.

It is a wonderful and strange thing to talk with a child genius especially on a daily basis. It certainly skews my view of the world. I see science everywhere. I'm constantly learning new things and I'm always teaching. Today is was multiverse theory and constellations. Yesterday it was multiplication. Tomorrow it will be chemistry.