School daze

James came out of school today and handed me his report card. He was really anxious for me to read it, right away, so I took it and quickly glanced at it before pulling out of the parking lot for home. MISTAKE. I was expecting to see "the usual:" all good stuff. But instead, this report had lots of "satisfactory," just a few "exceeds expectations" and a few "not meeting expectations."

The marks were bugging me. I kept glancing over again at red lights to see what I was missing. Meanwhile, James kept asking me, cheerily, if I had finished reading it and what did I think? Ah, the honesty test. "Very nice, James. What do YOU think about it?" He responded that he thought it was good and he was happy. Well, that was my main concern, I suppose, that he would be discouraged to have so many unusually low marks. Obviously, he was taking it okay, so I should be fine with it, too.

But I wasn't fine. It was the particular categories where he fell short: "Independently begins and pursues a task" and "Organizes self, materials and belongings" all "need improvement." So, he is doing fine academically, but has apparently hit a wall with his behavior/study skills/self-management. Parent-angst was building rapidly. Is this it, I thought? Will his ADD catch up to him this year? It looks like he is finally having trouble controlling it. Will we have to consider medication? Will I have to face a reality that he may not ever succeed in school, even though he is more than bright? You can see my thoughts were quickly getting out of hand.

As we pulled into the driveway, I had worked myself into quite a stew, trying to look cheerful for James as I dissected all these thoughts internally. I was so involved, actually, that it took James several tries to make me understand. "Just kidding, Mom." "Mom, no, really, that isn't my report card. That is a fake one that Mrs. A used to explain them to us. Here is my real card."

Hmm. I have to give him credit for convincingness. Or whack myself for gullibility induced by an over-eagerness to embrace bad news, I guess. It was a pretty good joke. (And thankfully, no need to deal with all this angst quite yet.)