I've had a problem with Madeline doing the bare minimum to skate by with an A or B since 1st grade. She doesn't have the competitive drive to top all the other kids that I had as a child. She's laid back like Bryan, and it's a trait that drives me crazy. I have done my best to not brow beat her about it over this past year.
I was looking through her writing folder and I came across tons of incomplete sentences and misspelled words that she is very capable of spelling correctly (Grrr). And then I stumbled on it. A little journal titled "Write Every Day 100 Days of Writing!". I was expecting paragraphs (like she wrote in 1st grade, only better). Instead, I found mostly one sentence entries and many more sentence fragments with misspelled words. I know what we'll be working on this Summer.
As I read through the journal, I began to realize that Madeline has no regard for whether or not she may be embarrassing anyone with the things she writes. After reading the journal, I feel that I've been portrayed as either the inept or just plain mean mom. Ugh.
Here are some of the highlights from her gem of a journal:
#8 What is in the inside of your refrigerator?
"If you loooked in my refrigerator you would find some jello and cramberry jucie and apple jucie and a carten of milk." (Translation: My mom doesn't cook OR buy food)
#25 What would you want to do right now if you could do anything you wanted?
"I would Skip school right now." (Are you kidding me? What am I going to do when this kid is in high school?)
#23 Describe a time when you were embarrassed.
"I was embarrassed when my daddy whent and yaped in the prinsubuls office." (Uh, you told Mommy and Daddy lots of lies about how the 1st grade teacher was treating you and that forced us to call a meeting with the principal and the teacher that lasted 2 1/2 hours. Oh, and you embarrassed us since we believed what you said, and we wound up looking like fools. Thanks for that! Good thing the principal and the 1st grade teacher are retiring this year.)
#26 What do you think about when you cannot fall asleep?
"I think I need a midnight snack." (Yes, because we don't feed you and we don't have any food. You established that earlier in the journal, remember?)
#30 When was the last time you cried and why?
"I have a mamy that yells a lot" (Yeah, I'm just a big meanie that likes to make little girls cry. You got me!)
#31 Tell about 3 things you would want to take with you if you moved.
"I would love to bring my bead bunny." ("bead" means dead, and let me just say EWWW!)
#47 Describe your favorite meal.
"My favorite meal is pumpkin pie. I like it because it is yummy" (Yes, when I do feed my children, it is ONLY from the dessert menu.)
#52 Tell about something you think is exciting.
"Going to see my daddy n Dalis" (Ok....Dalis, I assume is Dallas, TX. Bryan went there on a business trip. This journal entry makes it sound like her "real" dad doesn't live with us, doesn't it? Or, it sounds like Mommy is so mean that I want to fly to Texas to get away from her.)
#61 Name three excuses for not eating something.
"Its yucky. I'm not hungrey. I need to go to the bathroom." (Ah yes, the I have to go to the bathroom excuse so I don't have to eat. Hasn't worked since 2006.)
#89 What is the weirdest thing that has ever happened to you?
"When my mom played outside." (Come on! If my kids are outside, I'm outside and I like to play. I play on the Power Wheels and hop ball and I don't like to give the other kids a turn. What planet is this kid on?)
#90 What is the strangest sound you have ever heard?
"whem my mom yelled at the dog" and there is an illustration that says "stop it you dum dog!" and the crying dog says "wimper". (I have no words for this that I won't misconstrue with my warped sense of humor.)
#95 Describe a time when you were in trouble.
"I was in trouble because I stoll a cookie from mommy!" (I don't recall this. I do recall a pen stealing incident. So not only do we not have food, I also punish my children for stealing food from me. What can I say? I'm cranky when I'm hungry. )
LOL!! Sometimes kids just say what's on their mind. A dear friend of mine children are in PS (public school) and her daughter, 2nd grader, had to also keep a journal. My friend got the journal and read passage similar to your DD's. Not only that but passages about the house being "dirty". Which makes me laugh, because if you knew my friend you would know that her house is not dirty. I mean Martha would be proud of my dear friend's home! LOL
ReplyDeleteyou are absolutely right, the last week of school is all "fluff" in my opinion. I remember when my kids were younger that they watched a lot of movies that last week at school. Made me wonder why they couldn't extend learning just a bit more and maybe have 2-3 days to wind down the year and not 5-7 days.
ReplyDeleteIf I remember correctly, and my kids are 20/23 so they were in school a long time ago, I remember the teachers encouraging them to keep a little journal that they needed to write in every day. The teachers weren't concerned with spelling or sentence structure, they just wanted thoughts put down on paper. I wonder if that is similar to what your daughter was doing in her journal.
I remember my son one Mother's Day, when they were making a book "My Mom" to give to us moms wrote when describing me "she wears dirty shoes". My tennis shoes at the time were a bit worn; just waiting for pay day to get a new pair. I wondered what the teacher thought of that. I'm sure they hear/read far worse than what your daughter wrote.
betty
Betty,
ReplyDeleteYou just reminded me of what Ellie did back in December when you mentioned the Mother's Day book your son gave you. Her class did a sharing exercise where they all go around the room and say what their family did for Thanksgiving. Most of the responses on the poster board that was displayed front and center in the school's entry way said things like we had turkey. Ellie doesn't like turkey and she's a bit of a non-conformist. So she told the class that "Mommy cooked peanut butter and jelly for dinner. We had cupcakes, too.". I wanted to die when I saw that. The truth is, I didn't cook anything for Thanksgiving this past year. We went to Bryan's Aunt's house up in Stony Brook, NY. We had turkey, but Ellie doesn't like turkey. She didn't want to tell the class she had something she didn't like. We didn't even have cupcakes, we had pumpkin muffins that she refused to eat. The teachers and parents all got a good laugh out of Ellie's Thanksgiving dinner.