Wednesday, May 18, 2011

When I'm not there

(I don't have time to meet up with Josh's dad until Friday and he said that's fine, so I guess it's not about my head. Which is fine. I mean my head is. And not meeting until Friday.)

 This woman adopted or is fostering (I didn't catch which) a boy who is seven and doesn't even know the alphabet. He is kind of hyper and so after seeing him having such a hard time staying still at the dining room table I decided we needed to move around. I also broke the alphabet down into five-letter chunks so it doesn't seem as big.

The woman sat on the living room couch pretending to read a magazine, but really interrupting my flow every two seconds to yell at the boy to listen to me, to focus, sit still. I hate people like this. Finally when the boy deflated at her criticisms I had to give her my "go away" speech. She took it well and went into another room somewhere, but still kept yelling at him.

When I was leaving, as I told him he did a great job she interrupted and argued with me. Telling him he was never going to learn to read if he didn't pay attention and follow directions. Telling him he was already way behind his peers, did he want to continue getting even more behind? After the front door closed and I was in the hallway, you could hear her screaming at him that he was a waste of money. Shit, and this is better than where he was before? Damn.


4 comments:

Nina said...

oh God. That makes me want to cry.

You sound like a really amazing tutor though.

Abby said...

If she's fostering him, wonder if you could find his social worker and give her a call? Unfortunately things like that are really small potatoes to them, but it sounds pretty emotionally abusive to me.

Zephyr said...

That poor kid. *sigh*

But you do sound like an amazing tutor.

Yankee, Transferred said...

Oh dear. I hope you don't give up. You may be his only hope for feeling worthwhile.

I wish you had been around to tutor my kid when she needed help. (But you're the same age.)