Insomnia + the inept "evil" math teacher = rough 18 hours for my son and me.

How did I forget about this teacher? She's the one that made life difficult for my oldest daughter (now in 8th grade) when she was in 4th and 5th grade. I have given birth to two concrete thinkers who struggle with non-tangible concepts. Throw on top of it these are my two with perfectionistic tendencies.

Son has some difficulties and academic challenges despite a high IQ. The concept of algebra and inequalities is difficult for him. Then throw in the fact that these are in word problem form. And even if you can answer them, they want to know what strategy was employed to come up with the answer. I appreciate higher-level thinking, but not when foist on a 4th grader.

Round One was 45 minutes yesterday. Happy kid melted into a tantrum, clearly frustrated that I didn't do it the exact way his teacher did it on the board. We calmed down enough to get 1-3 done but "to show work" we had several scratch papers. Round Two was a solid ten minutes when I tried to convince him it was OK if I rewrote the work neatly (he is dysgrafic and frustration at the level it was would produce nothing legible.) I sent the email explaining my rationale for rewriting the work.

Everyone sleeps at night, but I took a nap afternoon because I was bone tired after being up all night with the sick kid who was home yesterday. I watched Stephen King's Thinner before bed, which totally messed with my head and gave me an entire night of dream weirdness.

I barely had enough energy to get up and make breakfast and lunch (I see here the clear benefit of organization here and have no one to blame but myself). And oh yes, younger daughter needs a dress for the Father Daughter Dance THIS Saturday and can we go to the mall today after school? This requires me writing five notes to five teachers saying my kids won't take the bus. And I managed to get the gym shorts wrong, so the youngest had to take black soccer shorts instead of gym shorts and was told by his older brother than he'd get a detention (they don't do that to 1st graders). So I've got one crying child and then the oldest son doesn't want to go to school tos ee *that* teacher, what is she going to say to him? etc, etc.

I see why my one friend homeschools her child with anxiety, though her child has some major general issues and mine has minor specific ones. I should say this was after our school wouldn't allow the 3rd grader to switch teachers and our dear principal suggested medication(!) (Hard to believe for me since she's been so accomodating and helpful with my child) Oh, my I'm sure there are life lessons to be learned in all of this, but I'm not sure what they are.


Thanks for the chance to ramble. I think I'm going back to bed though I shouldn't have plowed through the caffeine.