Trish’s Blog

This is the year that it all falls apart. I’m sure of it. The worst is still to come. If we think we are pulling out hairs or growing grey ones now, next year is going to blast us right between our parental eyeballs.

A few months ago, I looked up Rick Riordan on the web to see when his next book was coming out. I learned that he was coming to Houston for a book signing on May 6, the day after his book The Last Olympian was to be released. I thought it would be a great opportunity for Sarah to meet the author of one of her favorite series. We would have to get her out of school early that day because the presentation was starting right when school ended and we would have to drive to the other side of downtown Houston to the Westchester Academy. I fixed it all in my mind, talked with Josh, and then brought it up to Sarah. She was excited and very interested in going. When she told her friends, a couple of them asked to come along. We set it all up, and three very excited girls were going to meet Rick Riordan.

I was excited to see him myself because I like Percy Jackson, too. In fact, Sarah and I argue about who started reading the series first. In my version of events, I bought the second book at a book fair a few years ago. I thought the cover was interesting and the summary was captivating. When I showed it to Sarah at the book fair she was not particularly interested. I thought to myself, I’ll buy the book and read it myself and maybe, just maybe she’ll pick it up and read something besides Harry Potter. Months went by and she did not pick up the book. One day after school, I sat on the floor in full view of the children doing their homework and started to read The Sea of Monsters only to stop and proclaim loudly, “Aww man! This is the second book.” I adhere strictly to reading a series in order because way too much is given away otherwise. I don’t think anyone in the room really batted an eye at me and my crisis. Eventually, I did get the first book from the library, read it and then the second, and the third. By that time, Sarah followed suit. She claims that she told me to buy the book at the book fair because they had read the first chapter in class and everyone was talking about it. WHATever. I know it’s not true but she won’t believe me so every now and then we bring up the argument and go at it only to end in smug looks and rolling eyes amid smiles. It has become a pet argument.

Regardless of how it all started, she is so much a fan of this series that she gently reprimanded me today for having left The Last Olympian on the floor. She forbids her brothers from even touching the book, and now I learn that it is not allowed to touch the floor either. You would think it a sacred text. My excuse was that keeping it on my nightstand would only make it fair game at the hands of a not-so-gentle toddler when Zoe awoke from her nap. I was merely protecting the hallowed pages.

I have not finished the book yet. I’m taking it slow because it is the last book of the series and we own the book, so there’s no deadline to return it. Still, I think my favorite line of the book occurs in the beginning of Chapter Six: My Cookies Get Scorched when Percy Jackson says, “In other words, it was totally awesome,” in regards to shadow traveling. It is one of the reasons why Rick Riordan’s series is such a favorite with kids. He knows how they think. I learned at the book signing that the series first started as a bedtime story for his son who is diagnosed with ADD and has dyslexia. Naturally, Percy Jackson is dyslexic and is diagnosed as ADD because of his demigod nature. How cool is it that a father would go to the trouble of creating a world where having dyslexia probably meant you were a demigod? I became an even bigger fan.

There were a lot of kids in the auditorium yelling and screaming and laughing at Mr. Riordan’s jokes. He announced that they were making a movie out of first book, The Lightning Thief. During the Q&A, girls wanted to know if the actor playing Percy Jackson was cute. He told everyone to go to the website and they could read all about it and see pictures. He announced that he was working on a new series centered around Camp Half Blood which Sarah is VERY excited about. We also learned how to pronounce his last name. I tend to pronounce unfamiliar words the same way I would Hawaiian words. So Riordan was to me Ree OR dahn, but in fact it is RYE or din.

Another thing I liked about him was his love for Greek Mythology and how he kept citing a certain English teacher for getting him started in it. I have one of those teachers. I first read the Iliad and the Odyssey in Mr. Peebles’ class at Canfield Junior High School in Coeurd’Alene, ID. He taught English as if it were a second language, so we made the t-graphs showing the conjugations of verbs and I actually learned more about English as a language and how we have so many exceptions to the rules which is what makes learning the language a bit difficult. Anyway, he was an interesting teacher and I had a lot of respect for him. I loved learning about the different gods and their different powers. You could tell that he loved it, too. If it were not so, I would have forgotten all about him, I think. I wish Sarah had a teacher like that this year, but until she learns to like teachers for what she can learn (and not just by whether they are nice or not), I like anyone who can influence her to talk kindly and reverently about their teachers, like Mr. Riordan did.

So here’s the thing… when I went to pick up Sarah early from school, she was not waiting in the front office like we had planned. Instead, I got a call from her stating that she was in the assistant principal’s office. She got busted for writing on a desk (her proclamations of boredom and starvation) for which she would have to serve a two-hour dentention after school on Friday. I told her that it was an incredibly stupid thing to do, and she agreed, however, it would have been better for her to realize that before her vandalism. I wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her silly. If our planned excursion had not been months in the making, I would have made her stay at school and aborted the whole mission. I couldn’t, however, because two other girls were coming and I had paid for the book full price from the book store running the whole gig. I had to put all of my frustration on a back burner.

When it came time to revisit the issue, Sarah got her progress report from school. Not only had her grades dropped, it was the worst progress report ever. She has two each of A’s, B’s, and now C’s! She is enrolled in honors classes, but I’m convinced that the defect is her laziness, not her brain. She “forgets” to turn in make up work from being sick or “forgets” to ask what make up work she has to do and all the while, she is coming home saying she doesn’t have any homework. Grrrrr! On the one hand, I want to commend her for the good grades she did get, but I don’t want her to let school work slip completely off the radar over things like her hair, her clothes, her shoes. Do you think maybe I’m overreacting?

We have taken away her iPod, her books, and are restricting TV watching. The usual… plus, she has been working non-stop this weekend for a particular offense involving her new glasses. She has been doing dishes, making dinner, doing laundry (mostly because on Thursday night I came down with the virus everyone has had in our household), and helping with the baby. She was feeling pretty victimized at first, but she has since taken a new perspective and is rising to the challenges we are puting her through.

And the hits keep on coming… I received an email on Friday from her science teacher informing me that she is failing due to two zeroes that she can make up during tutoring hours or at home. At home seems to be too difficult for her, so I am giving her one chance and once chance only. Tomorrow she must find out what the work is and get it done. If she forgets to ask or comes home without doing it, I have threatened to *cue scary music* come to her science class in front of her friends to ask the teacher myself. What greater fear does a pre-teen girl have than seeing her mother in school and out of her correct setting? I am emailing the teacher to back me up and let me come during class. Hopefully, I will not have to resort to such tactics, but it might just be the perfect formula for motivation.

I know. I know. I should probably count my blessings that this is all that I’m dealing with as a pre-teen parent. It could be drugs or smoking or pornography. It could be cussing and premarital sex. It could be a fixation with death or depression. It could be fatal disease or kidnapping or molestation. She is a good girl. She practically begged to go to church today even though us sickies couldn’t go. I’m just worrying about things that haven’t happened yet, I guess. I’m thinking that this is the last good year of “normal” tragedies. Next year it may well be about peer pressure to drink or get naked. I hope she will stick with the promises she has made to herself despite my deficits in parenting.

Why can’t they just stay small?

Posted on May 17th, 2009 by trish
Filed under: Haley Kids