Evan is doing great. Sometimes he pushes me to the limit and I lose my cool and then others I have tears in my eyes at how proud I am of him. At school Evan stays in the top of his class. He doesn't struggle at all with any of the subjects and doesn't need help hardly with any of his homework. He loves school and doesn't want to miss a day. I was exhausted after the holiday and mentioned to him tha he and I should skip the first day back and he looked at me like I was crazy and said... I have perfect attendance and I'm not ruining that Mom. Okay... geez. He loves his teacher. He has been blessed with good teachers and so far has loved each of them. I'm so thankful for that. His testing scores are really high - in the top 2% of his grade - he and his little school/heart buddy friend hold the top % - isn't that cool?!? His handwriting does get a little sloppy and I sometimes make him redo it. Mean Mama. He usually doesn't complain though - at homework time he climbs up to the kitchen bar and 5 minutes later he is done and off to play. He loves to read and be read to. So academically at school he is doing great. Socially he is doing pretty good. He still struggles to understand relationships. He is so sensitive. He still cries very easily if his feelings are hurt. It doesn't take much to hurt his feelings and he doesn't forget it easily either. I still encourage him to try hard to not let little things get to him and his response is always, "I try Mom, I do, but it hurts to stop the cry when I need to." So he cries. He also tells everything. If Evan says how something happened you can be pretty sure it's the truth. He doesn't hold anything in, even if it is going to get him in trouble. Because he tells everything he can be known to be quite the tattler. I'm sure this is annoying to his teacher at times, it is to me. He will be telling me a whole run down of something that happened at school and it ends with "and Mom I told!" Like I should be surprised. I'm always trying to encourage him to give people a break or to remember that sometimes people, including himself, have bad days. He is so sensitive. Have I said that? Some things have really been worrying him. This usually comes out during his shower at night. He doesn't like to be in the bathroom alone so usually he gets in the shower as I'm finishing up with my nightly routine of brushing teeth and putting on moisturizer. He will ask in a slightly trembled voice "Mom, I have a question." Currently he is very worried about his middle finger. Someone at school explained to a number of kids on the playground what it was. Evan came home and asked about it and we explained in terms we were okay with and why we don't use those gestures or language. However, Evan has always liked to pop his fingers. He also uses his fingers to count sometimes, etc. He has asked probably no less than 20 times if that is okay. While he is in the shower the conversation goes
-Mom I did it again and I wondered afterwards if I was doing a bad thing or not
-Did you mean it to be bad
-no, I was just popping my fingers
-then it wasn't bad, it's only bad if you mean for it to be bad Evan
-but after I popped them I remembered what it means so is that bad because I remembered
-no...
And so the conversation goes. I've told him God gave him 10 fingers and expects him to use them for his good. He still worries and brings it up quite often. He is really hard on himself if he thinks he possibly did something bad so we have been really trying to make sure he doesn't think HE is bad. So often he pushes his limits on smart mouthing or saying what we consider bad words that I have started to worry that maybe all this is because he doesn't get enough praise. So Eric and I have really been working on making sure we praise him for all the good things he does and remind him how proud we are of him daily and that we think he is a good boy. This does seem to have helped. I wish he weren't so hard on himself. So sensitive...
I think he is going to be an amazing man someday... I just keep thinking about how hard Middle school will be for his sensitive little self. Hopefully we can keep his confidence in himself high. Thanks for checking in and from now on when something happens I want to document I'm just going to post it instead of waiting because I'm just too scatter brained for that.
Evan & His school/heart buddy Caleb at the Globetrotters game at the Yum Center.
Us at the Harlem Globetrotters game. Our local heart support group went together. What a fun night.
