Early Onset

A parent was at school this afternoon and stopped in with her son, my student, to check on a few things. His grade was a little lower than she expected, and she was wondering why.

"Well," I turned to the student, "you kind of stopped turning your reading logs in at the end of the quarter, right?"

He shrugged. To me it was acknowledgement of something he and I had discussed before. To his mom, it was something different.

"Honey?" she began, "Did you know what you were supposed to do?"

He shrugged again. I thought about ways to tactfully remind the two of them that this was the same assignment he had been completing weekly since September.

"He's never deceptive," she assured me. "If he didn't do it, there was definitely a misunderstanding."

I raised my eyebrows. He lowered his head.

"I guess I forgot," he said. "And it takes too long, y'know, to write the date and everything."

"Yes!" his mom agreed, "Writing his name and date on anything has always been a struggle."

"Well," I said, "do you know what the homework is this quarter?"

"The writing log?" he mumbled.

"Right!" I answered. "But you didn't do the writing that we checked today."

He scowled a little. His mom looked on, uncertainly.

"What happened?" she asked.

"I forgot!" he snapped.

"But we talked about it... What's wrong with you? You're never like this about your school! Is it that you love reading and writing so much that being forced to do them makes you afraid you won't like them anymore?" His mother's words hung in the air. He scoffed quietly.

I understood. Although he is a pretty typical sixth graders, he is her oldest child, and she was not expecting adolescence quite so soon.