Plateau

Hit my first plateau today and it's kind of a relief to have it out of the way. No loss, barely-worth-mentioning gain.

Had a mini-win in another area. I tend to be a bit of a helicopter parent, so I'm working not being so emotionally invested in my son's successes and (potential) failures. Fixing issues is a natural bent for me. I see a colon when it should be a semi-colon, it's natural to fix. But when you're helping your child, you want to coach them to see it and fix it themselves - it's the whole teach a man to fish and he'll be able to feed himself the rest of his life thing.

My 6th grader had a big history project due earlier this week that of course he had procrastinated on completing. Seeing the crash and burn, I encouraged him to put an action plan in place, i.e., Tues write two paragraphs, Weds write two paragraphs, Thurs edit rough draft, etc. The night before he turned everything, I still wasn't satisfied with the effort put forth. However, he was sure that he had done B+/A- work, at a minimum.

Yesterday, he was bursting with pride as he told me he got an A+!

In that moment, I was able to let go just a bit more; to accept that although he won't always make the best choices, his successes are his own and his pride in a job well-done will be far more rewarding if he knows he completed the effort without mom coming in and fixing punctuation and spelling errors behind him. Just as he'll learn more if he'd failed and had to own that situation and the consequences.

My proud mom moment wasn't that he got the A+ - it was that he was proud of himself for doing the work and achieving success. If in his life he generates his own happiness, his own sense of accomplishment and doesn't have to rely on others for those feelings, that's all I could hope for.