Long emotional day...

Tomorrow is the end of the term. Today I found out while volunteering in Jake's class that he had 30+ missing assignments. ?!

I knew he was a little behind from being sick a couple of weeks ago, and I knew he was stressing out about it, but I had no idea that it had gotten this bad. And apparently he hadn't told me because he was embarrassed and worried that I would be mad at him. I wasn't upset as much as sad that he had created such a problem for himself and was so stressed out.

I (unfortunately) can completely relate to the overwhelming feelings of stress that happens when you procrastinate until something hits crisis point. In fact I remember doing precisely the same thing when I was his age, I missed a week of school with pneumonia and it took me months to get my work caught back up.

I don't know if it was because I could remember how I felt back then or if I'm just a tad hormonal right now, but there I was sitting on the floor under my son's desk trying to help him sort out his papers (another contributing factor to his problem) and talking to him about getting organized and being responsible for his school work. His big blue eyes filled up with tears and as I reached up to wipe his cheek I started to cry, because I had made him cry! And then he saw that he had made me cry, so he started to cry harder... we were a mess!

The good news is that even though it took all afternoon and evening he was able to get organized and finished with his work. We have a plan in place to keep him from getting this far behind ever again, and I got to go to my knitting group and laughed until I cried, which is always cathartic.

I am also really looking forward to Spring Break... the fourth grade is rough.