Finally opening up to Mom.

My almost 16yos finally came to me last night and admitted that he was over his head. He's been acting like it's been no big deal; trying to keep up with eight subjects in high school (after 12 years of homeschooling with Mom)and still have a "fabulous" social life with friends, movies, bowling league, and more.

Last night he texted me with my own phone (quite a trick) and begged me to let him sleep an hour later this morning, go in late to school, and told me he was ready to ask for help with some of his classes that he's been struggling to keep up in. I was tempted to give him the "you've made your bed, now lay in it" speech (shame on me). But instead, I just said three things (no lecture):

1) Are you ready to admit that you haven't been making your schoolwork enough of a priority and make the necessary changes? (homework coming before friends and fun NO MATTER WHAT)

2) Are you ready to stop arguing with me about it when I see that you're not making a wise decision (major procrastinator)?

3) Yes, you can sleep in, but when you wake up, you complete your missing assignment in History.

He said "yes" to the first two items, and heaved a sigh of relief and gratitude when I said the third.

So, this morning, he got up an hour later, worked on his assignment, and dh drove him to school. I hope he meant what he said. It took a lot for him to actually say in his text to me, "I won't ask for another morning off again...I promise!" See, it's been only five weeks since he started attending public school. And he's asked to stay home at least four different mornings already. And we've forced him to go, b/c we felt it was very important for him to have to learn that anything worth having would take doing "the hard thing." I guess after only five weeks, he's realizing just what we said was true; they don't do there what we do in our homeschool, and they require certain things that we don't think are necessary for genuine learning to take place. But, if you want to play football, you just have to do what they require. I knew it was tougher for him than he thought it was going to be, but he was SURE not going to admit that to his parents. LOL!

And of course, I'm wanting to probably make it a bigger deal that it is. But any attempt by me to do so would be met with some pretty serious eye-rollilng. LOL!

So today, I'll just praise the Lord that ds finally felt like he could admit to his "O'Lady" that he needed her. *sniff*