The Odd Couple

So here’s the current State of the Kids.

Sonny remains his normal, cheerful, ebullient self… as long as he’s doing something he wants to do. Working with him on schoolwork-related tasks has become increasingly difficult. He gets frustrated very easily — sometimes immediately — and no amount of praise seems to encourage him. In just the last couple of weeks, he seems to be slipping back on reading. He is still at the bottom of the mathematical mountain, struggling with the most basic addition problems. And writing is such a nightmare that I hesitate to put him through it, even though clearly I must. It’s just so sad to see him berate himself: “Sloppy! Sloppy! I scribbled!” The sloppiness makes him upset, and when he gets upset he scribbles, and that’s sloppy, and that makes him upset.

All in all, I’m glad he’s back in summer school, where trained professionals are putting him through the paces, instead of his clueless parents. Alas, Sonny himself is not glad to be back in school. At some point in the last couple of weeks, he decided he doesn’t like school anymore. All weekend long he kept saying, like someone making a wish, “No school Monday.”

“Yes, Sonny. School on Monday.”

Commence the tears. The same tears we get before a dentist appointment: I may be helpless to change my fate but you can’t stop me from showing how I feel. Is this the same kid who, a month ago, always wanted to wait for his school van in the driveway? What the hell happened?

Meanwhile, Peanut has graduated first grade, and it’s becoming more and more clear that she is going to fall on the Mathematical side of the great Math/Verbal divide. She’s reading at an advanced level, which is strange, because she hates to read. Numbers, though — ah, numbers. She’s just started a third-grade workbook in math and is finding it insultingly easy. There are concepts coming up that she hasn’t yet been introduced to, so we’ll stick with it, but I expect she’ll be in the fourth-grade workbook before the end of the summer.

And recently I’ve started to teach her chess. When I brought up the subject, I didn’t think she’d be interested. She is. She likes the way the knights move — although she can never remember the name “knights”; she calls them “beasts.” At a friend’s suggestion, we’re playing now using only the pawns, the rooks, and the kings, so I can teach her very rudimentary strategy. It’s slow going, and I keep thinking she’s going to ditch it for more immediate pleasures, like the Playstation, but for the moment she’s sticking with it. (As long as there is time for the Playstation afterward, of course.)

These two kids, in short, could not be less alike. But thank heaven, they are still at an age where they love each other unconditionally. It’s clear that Peanut is more and more aware of her brother’s shortcomings — I’ll write more about that soon — but she accepts it with a shrug: If it takes him a little longer to take his turn in Chutes and Ladders, well, so be it. And she still prefers to share a bedroom with him. This congenial attitude won’t last forever, of course. I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for the day when Peanut views her brother with disdain instead of acceptance. But for now the two of them are not just brother and sister, but friends. If I was the praying sort, my prayer each night would be: Let that last just one more day.