Wednesday, September 18, 2013

I Moved!

This is a bittersweet day. After five + years, I am saying goodbye to this blog and starting fresh at my new updated website. To read my new blog, Limitless, please visit JeanetteHanscome.com.

See you there!
Jeanette

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Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Nathan's Painful Day



Nathan gave me permission to use his "pain" as blogging material today, so maybe his willingness to be open and vulnerable will be rewarded with a slew of sympathy.

After a flawless first week of middle school, Nathan had his first bad day--one that ended with telling me, "I have stress." Here is a brief recap of events:
He left his P.E. clothes in Core class and had to run back to get them during lunch.
He accidentally kicked his lunch bag, causing his spoon to puncture his yogurt, which then exploded all over the inside of his lunch bag. We can be thankful that A) After three days of paper bags, we decided to go with an insulated one, which contained the mess very well. B) He had already eaten half his sandwich.
He lugged his heavy math book for the entire day, only to learn that it was meant to be kept at home.
His science teacher gave each kid a string of beads to use for a homework experiment and his string broke right after school. All but one bead rolled into the street and under the feet of other students. The one bead that he managed to retrieve worked for the assignment but wasn't nearly as cool.
He has to dress out for P.E. for the first time tomorrow and he is dreading it, along with the entire 6th-grade class.

For an 11-year-old, "I have stress" is no exaggeration." But he has responded with his typical resilience and humor:
When his yogurt exploded, he decided to forget the second half of his sandwich and go right for the desert before that got messed up too.
Instead of using the broken bead string as an excuse to skip his science homework, he managed with the remaining bead.
He sang what he knew of the song "You had a Bad Day."
He found an annoying song on the Internet to "comfort" himself with, knowing that in the end it would just make both of us laugh.

He assured me, "But I still like my school."
He attempted to use this as a valid excuse to go out and buy a toy or video game. (Nice try.)

In the process, he had his "pain," as he calls it, acknowledged and is working on moving forward, hoping tomorrow will be better even with the changing for P.E. issue. So today was a reminder that some days just plain stink. We can work at turning them around, but if that doesn't work, at least we can start over tomorrow.

His homework just fell between my bed and the wall. As Nathan put it, "Talk about a bad day!"


    

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