I Cried At My Son's Teacher Conference

Today Amy Bozza of My Real Life joins us for Motherhood Monday with a post about trying to find the attention balance when you have more than one child.

Amy Bozza, author of the blog, My Real Life, lives in NJ with her husband and four children. Amy is a middle school administrator, writer,  blogger, and piano teacher who has been published as a contributor in the best-selling book I Just Want to Pee Alone. You can find Amy on Facebook at My Real Life or at her blogs at My Real Life and Bozza Writes.





I Cried At My Son's Teacher Conference

Teacher conferences for Baby and Monkey in the Middle were last week.
I went in pretty confident that I knew what the teachers were going to say.
Both boys are smart, do well, need to slow down, pay more attention to detail and write neater.
Monkey in the Middle (3rd grade) is all about structure and the rules, has a lot of friends and seems happy.
Baby Monkey (1st grade) doesn’t talk much, but enjoys his friends and seems happy.
I was dead on with both conferences.
However, at Baby’s conference, I was thrown a bit of a curve.
Nothing terrible.  Nothing of extreme concern.
His teacher mentioned that they have a chart on the board where kids move their name magnets to show who is buying lunch and who brought their own lunch.
When the kids come in, in the morning, the first thing they do is move their magnet to the appropriate lunch space.
Apparently, if Baby Monkey doesn’t get there first, he rearranges the magnets so that his can be on top.
When they read books on the carpet, he makes sure he weasels his way in between everyone so that he can be front and center.
She said, “He never does anything wrong or breaks the rules, but you can tell that it is very, very important to Baby to be first.”
And, while it is age appropriate (what first grader doesn’t want to be first) the fact that he is rearranging magnets to be first and weaseling in-between people got me thinking.
He’s such a laid-back kid.
Seriously.
And he’s kind of had to be.
He has an older brother who has anxiety and requires a lot of our time and attention.
He has a younger brother who is a toddler and requires a lot of our time and attention.
He often gets his needs attended to second.
Or third.
Or fourth.
And he never complains.
It’s outside of his control, and so he goes with the flow and lets it go.
But, at school, by moving those magnets or smushing in-between his friends on the carpet, he can control being first, and so he does.
And as I thought about it on the way home, I started to cry.
This kid is such a good boy, and yes, there are great lessons to be learned in having to wait your turn and be patient and realize that you aren’t the center of the universe, but every now and then, we all deserve to be the center of the universe, and I want to be sure that he knows that he IS the center of our universe.
He’s not alone in the center of our universe, but he is there, and I don’t ever want him to feel like he’s hovering on the outskirts and we’ll get to him when we’re done with everyone else.
So, I gotta do better with my Baby Monkey.

My First Friend

I grew up with one sister, who is three years younger than I am. I tortured her growing up, but if anyone else messed with her they had to answer to me.  We played all day together…mostly whatever I decided we were going to play but we laughed the whole time.  We got on each other’s nerves but made each other smile.  I don’t remember my life before my sister was born.  Even though I was here for three years before she arrived I always knew her. She was my first friend.  Siblings have a connection that no one else can understand. 

My sister and I can argue but we move on as if nothing ever happened.  We are there for each other through the good times and the bad times.  Friends have come and gone but my sister was always the last one standing, waiting, ready to play when all my friends went home, ready to pick me up when boyfriends broke my heart and cheer me on when success came my way.

When we were little we would play in the backyard for hours together. We would play with our dolls and giggle through our walls until our parents finally said enough time for bed!  Vacations were always fun because we had each other. We would swim all day, watch movies, laugh ourselves to sleep and do it all again the next day.  I spent my whole childhood with no real understanding of just how important my sister would be to me.

I went off to college and my sister stayed behind to finish high school. I missed her all the time.  By the time we were in our twenties we were best friends. We would get ready together, go out together and not a day went by that we didn’t talk to each other. We got each other through bad jobs, awful break ups, and finally both found our happiness. We stood at the altar for each other at our weddings, we got each other through miscarriages and jumped for joy when we were both pregnant. We were both there when our first children were born.  We are the godmother’s to one another’s first born.

She is still the first one I call when I need someone to talk to.  Now that I have two children I know that our parents must be so happy that we are as close as we are. I watch my boys play together and all I can think is be there for one another. There will never be a friend who will understand you the way your sibling does.  There is nothing that brings a smile to my face quite like watching my boys play together, listening to them laugh together, and simply knowing that just like me my oldest doesn’t remember life without his brother. Sometimes when history repeats itself it’s pure perfection.