The Runaway Boy Brain...

I'm sure this will come as quite a shock to those who know me (go ahead, brace yourselves), but I loooooved my School Days. (Pausing for sarcastic laughter to subside...) I thrived on learning new things, I lived to give correct answers, and I thrilled to receive Report Cards filled with good grades. (Yes, I was a geek...before there was even a word for it.) But I had no idea if any of this would rub off on my own children when it came time for them to leap into the academic world. Was my Inner Type-A Scholar genetically transferable? Would I need to painstakingly teach good scholastic habits? Up to now, I've considered myself very lucky that my sons seemed to be developing into fine, upstanding students. (Maybe it's due to all the repeated beating-them-over-the-head with "the importance of education" and "our high parental expectations for success" and "the value of putting forth your best effort" blah blah blah...On second thought, maybe we should lighten the heck up a little bit, before they crack from the strain and decide to run away and live in the school-free wilderness with Gypsies...) Anyway...I do sometimes get a bit of grumbling related to the amount and complexity of homework, or a few complaints about a particular subject that may not be so much fun to study. But by-and-large, the work gets done, the quality is acceptable, and the grades reflect appropriate progress and mastery.

Sooooo, just when I settled into a comfortable rhythm, thinking Team WestEnders was functioning like a well-oiled machine, the proverbial School Bus hit a speed bump in the First Quarter Road. Actually, a couple of bounces...more like a bunch of potholes, and the bus is pounding through them, flinging the passengers wildly about...oh, never mind. Let me explain: in a nutshell, 7th Grade is thus far kicking Derek's...butt. Now, we were warned by various parental friends--who themselves have older children--that the 7th Grade year for some unknown reason offers a whole collection of challenges to overcome. Derek also heard this informally from neighborhood kids who had weathered Middle School already, so it's accurate to say that we felt somewhat informed about the....onslaught? However, what I failed to factor into my School Management Paradigm for this year was Derek's new adolescent hormonal situation. It appears that whatever...male...stuff...is currently floating through his body and brain negatively affects his higher-order cognitive skills. That is, such basic-yet-crucial operations as: decision-making, problem-solving, planning, organization, critical-thinking...and even attention. These areas have never posed a problem of any kind for Derek in the past, but suddenly he's a different boy...one who drifts around in a kind of mental fog, utilizing extremely filtered "selective hearing", forgetting things immediately after you've told him, making uncharacteristically poor choices, demonstrating a sudden lack of impulse control...OY.

The boy who diligently, continuously handled his own school responsibilities last year abruptly vanished, to be replaced by a scatterbrained individual who instead, in the space of a couple of short weeks, did all of the following:
--came home one day and anxiously announced he had to make a model of a cell...and he needed me to go out and obtain modeling clay..."for tomorrow!"
--took advantage of every minute of his allowed video game time over the weekend, then dug out his backpack on Sunday night and seemed utterly astonished at the amount of homework he had avoided to that point, and still needed to accomplish before bedtime.
--spent an unusual amount of time after school in his room one day later that week, reading intently. When I interrupted to tell him to go to bed, he admitted that the book was due...tomorrow. I stared at him with a complete lack of comprehension: "You mean to tell me, all those hours you were playing PS3, or checking scores on your iTouch, or...just goofing off...you could have been working on your assignment?" (Can you just hear my voice rising in both volume and pitch toward the end of that rhetorical question?) After I railed at him for squandering his time and leaving the important task for the last minute, I imposed the first ever Electronics Ban--and also allowed him to stay up a little late and finish the doggone book. (And trust me, that particular punishment reeeealllly hit hard, as Derek--in order to have any video game stimulation at all--was reduced to watching over his brother's shoulder as Riley amused himself with his 3DS. Derek hated every minute of it...and will remember for next time, I'll wager...unless the Preteen Brain Freeze is still in effect...sigh...)

Clearly, the updated school routine is going to require a return to more stringent Parental Oversight...at least until his faculties--I don't know, calm down? kick back into gear? That should happen by the time he goes away to college, right? Until then, we're buckling up...