Mother: . . . And because of that D on the test, your grade point average went down to 3.94?
9th-grade child: No, Mom. I told you — it went down to 3.49.
Mother: 3.49! You never told me that! If your grade point average is below 3.50, the colleges won’t even look at you! Oh my God! 3.49! We have a lot of work to do.
9th-grade child Oh, Mom, I don’t think I want to take Psychology next year.
Mother: Well, we’re not taking Sociology. That’s a lower level course than Psychology. You’ll just have to suck it up — and get an A.
9the-grade child: silently lowers her head
I have just a few things to add:
Talk about people suffering all around us every day . . .
Stumble Upon It!
sunnymama said,
April 14, 2009 @ 4:32 am
Wow! Seems crazy to me. I’m thankful too that I’ve found another way to be with sunnyboy.
Mister Dad said,
April 14, 2009 @ 9:09 pm
Darned super-hearing and attention skills!
Can’t relate to your observation subjects at all. I audited a Soc class– liked a girl in it– and have studied psychology for the last 8 or 9 years, and that’s way after college for me! But then again, I’m interested in learning lots of stuff.
That poor kiddo’s got a real challenge ahead. Hopefully, they may have a wonderful teacher who knows how to turn them on! And the mom finds grace and peace, too. It’s easy for a parent to get love and wanting their kids to reach all their potential confused with fear and not reaching their own potential…
On the flip side, my two are (hopefully) learning plenty of what not to do when they’re parents. My goal is to recover in humility and model as much good stuff as I can come up with. So far, they get it…
sgaissert said,
April 15, 2009 @ 1:01 am
Thank you for your wise comment. I think you are so right about love and sincere expectations warping into fear and anxiety about expectations. I see that in so much of our world, especially post-9/11. Fear takes over and reasonable thought goes out the window… Thanks for expanding on my post so well.
Lisa said,
April 15, 2009 @ 1:36 am
That mother sounds like my engineer father….this conversation will not happen in my family as well.