Today I had to go to Parent/Teacher Conferences with Trent and Kaela. Kaela's is always first and I usually know how that one will go. She is my easy child/over achiever/excels at just about everything and anything. Sure no one is perfect, but she is pretty dang close. Her teacher had nothing but really nice things to say about her. She is a great student, she has a great personality, she is really "with it" and gets her work done, she's a good friend to other people, she will help other kids in the classroom who need it...and on and on. At one point I looked over at Kaela and thought, "How in the hell did I raise this and Trent is the total opposite." I'm just confused by the whole thing. She is a laid back girl. She is sweet and kind and just a blast to be with. She is a very likeable person 99.9% of the time. There is that 1% where she is a brat, but it is rare. I'm sure I don't have to tell you, but of course, she got all A's. She always has gotten A's and her teachers past and present always brag about her. I can still remember going in for my first Fall P/T conference with her kindergarten teacher. I was in there for less than 5 minutes. Her teacher told me, "Well, there's not much to tell and this is going to be really easy. Kaela knows everything she needs to know in order to pass Kindergarten. She's a great kid and I'm glad she's in my class." That was it, and the end of the meeting. From that point on, they have all been like that. I'm hoping that it will never change.
Now, Trent....oh poor Trent. I don't know what to do with him. Like I said before, I don't know how I raised both of these kids because they are so totally different. Trent seems to go downhill as the years go by. I have noticed a little trend though. The first of the year, he will slack up until that first P/T conference. After the first conference he kicks his butt in gear and pulls up his grades. Which, I guess is fine, but he really needs to be doing well from the start. Trent is a smart kid. I tell him all the time. He is more than capable of doing the work. He is being lazy. He is also rushing through tests, which causes him to get a bad score. We went through this in 3rd grade. Once he slowed down and really took the time to think, he started to do better. So, we are back to square one again. On this report he got a D and an F. Totally unacceptable. It will most likely take all year of good scores to pull those up. I know it took all year to get his D in Math up to a B and that was with extra credit. He got a C, too, which is okay, but still unacceptable because I know he can do better. So, he is getting pretty much everything taken away from him. His teacher never said that he needed help in any subject. I really don't think he does. She showed me his score on the state test and he did really well, so that tells me he is just being lazy or something. Right now some of the work he does is writing his words 10 time and then 8 times. I remember having to do that and I hated it. It was so boring and seemed so pointless to me. To be honest, I think it is just busy work...for him anyway. He has always been a good speller and writing them 18 times a week isn't really helping him with anything. Spelling is just something he never had to work at. He could bring home a list of words, forget to study them, take the test at the end of the week and get 100%. I don't think he has missed more than two words on a test and that was rare...very rare. Trent is a stubborn child. Wonder where he gets that from...hmmm. Anyway, he has attitude and is a pain most of the time. I'm really getting sick of it and maybe it is puberty or something. Maybe there is no reason for it, I don't know. What I do know is, when he is good, I really treasure that time. He is capable of being nice and not running his mouth. He really needs to work on his behavior. Maybe I just need to give him more responsibilty. I don't know. He is constantly fighting with his sister, but when I drop them off at school, they walk in together like they actually like eachother. Then again, he could be calling her a moron and her calling him a jerk and I don't even know it.
Anyway, for the most part I guess I have pretty good kids. I'm sure they aren't doing anything any other normal child would be doing...I hope. I'm sure it seems like I am always bragging about Kaela and complaining about Trent, and that is because I am. I really can't help that one gives me no trouble and the other gives me nothing but trouble. I just hope one day he will grow out of it, but I'm not counting on it.
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