Like all suburban white guys, I think that my kids are the greatest thing that ever happened to the world. I can't help it, I think that this opinion is issued to you when you check out of the hospital with them.
That being said, I feel very fortunate to have the kids that I have and I have to give most of the credit to their mother, because I have spent half their lives on airplanes and Holiday Inn Deluxe King Suites, so the single biggest influence on them through the years has been their mom. They are all old enough now to have a great deal of influence come from their friends as well, and we have been very fortunate in the friends that they have chosen as well.
Report cards came in the mail yesterday.
Our oldest, is a senior in high school and we are actively searching for the perfect university for him, and he got on the honor roll for the second period in a row. He has come a little late to this party, for the past six years we have hounded him to get his work done, and he has spent more energy avoiding homework than it would have taken him to do the work, but he has finally figured it out. Hopefully once he gets to college this new interest in actually doing the work will stick. It would have made things alot easier if he had just figured this out three years ago and then the schools would be picking him instead of the other way around. He is alot like I was in High School, never studies, never does the homework, but aces the tests so his grades are always respectable. It's hard to get mad at him when he is doing exactly what I did.
Our youngest who has always had pretty good grades, but has also had some of my tendencies when it comes to homework and studying, discovered football this year. He is in the seventh grade, and being that we live in Texas, he has been baptised into the world of Texas football. I can only liken this to a Bar Mitzvah or a confirmation (depending on your religious perspective, I grew up as an altar boy in the Catholic Church (more on that later) but went to more than the average number of Bar Mitzvahs and Bat Mitzvahs due to close family friends, so I feel qualified to refer to it either way, even though I am here in the south, which explains the original baptism description as an homage to my Baptist friends). His grade this year started out a little bit shaky because he was too busy memorizing his playbook instead of doing his homework. He figured out the balance and I am now happy to report that he made the honor role this period as well.
Now, our daughter, who is also the middle child, has been on the honor role since preschool where she clearly excelled in coloring in the lines and building with blocks, managed to get 4 A's 1 B a D and an Incomplete this period. She faithfully does her homework, her teachers love her, she doesn't have any of the bad traits that I had, like insisting that I was smarter than all of my teachers, she has been the perfect student. I am pretty sure that what has happened is that she has discovered the joy and freedom of high shcool (she is a freshman this year) and all of the activities and the associated boys that go along with it. She is brilliant like the other two so I am sure that she will get this fixed before the end of the semester.
It's never boring around her at report card time!
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