Learning Curve

Today, my son, Jack, and I were playing. He is a very active 3 yr. old and is very much boy, so we play with trains. A LOT! Today he wanted to play trains while I was typing on the computer, no big deal right? Wrong.

He wants to sit on my lap and use the desktop as his “train track.” I am now relegated to surfing the web instead of writing my blog for the day. No big deal, I wasn’t making much progress on it anyway. So now, I am surfing my normal haunt of sites: facebook, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, and CNN. The sites have nothing of importance, just mundane things that fill up time in my day.

It is at this point, that Jack informs me, “Dad! You broke my track!” To which I respond, “No I didn’t.” “Sure you did; I saw you. You can’t lie to me. You get a consequence.” “How about I just help you fix your track instead?” “OK, Daddy.”

Come to find out, all that was wrong was that my hand was sitting on the desktop and blocking his trains from making a full circuit around the keyboard. Who would have known?

On the other front, Lucy is at a very exciting point in her young life. I received a phone call from the guidance counselor at her elementary school today. After getting over the initial, “Is my child ok?” moment, I learned that they have been giving Lucy various placement and reading tests. Lucy has scored really high in all of the tests. Long story short, they want her to skip a grade level because she is reading at a 5th grade level as a kindergartener.

While I am very excited about the opportunity for Lucy and that the school is looking out for her, I am concerned and worried too. Lucy doesn’t transition well. She can be very emotional, and she doesn’t take teasing or picking very good either. I am glad that academically she is going to be taken care of, but socially I am concerned.

In the next week or so, we will have a meeting with her current teacher, and the guidance counselor to discuss Lucy’s options. It is going to be a very trying time and a great time of adjustment.

Most of all Lucy’s experiences at school and Jack’s at home are going to continue to show me that I am on a learning curve too.