Trying Mom's Patience

The fact is, if it's not attached to Mr. B he either loses it or can't find it.  Often I send him back to look and most of the time he finds it the second time but this week he lost his brand new shoes and although I'm not surprised, the $40 I spent on them has now been wasted and I'm not to happy about that.

He wore then exactly 10 days and on Wednesday they disappeared.  I don't remember them coming home that afternoon after Cross Country, he swears he did but when you live in 900 sq ft there's not many places a pair of shoes can be hiding.

This morning he came out of the bathroom is wrinkled pants.  When asked why, he said that he had lost a pair so he was having to wear dirty ones.  Lucky for him I had had a cup of coffee, so I said to check his closet because when he was in there earlier the light was off so maybe turning the light on would help.  Luckily my Spidey sense was right this morning and he left wearing wrinkle free pants. 

Already this year he lost his Math book, which again God was on his side and his teacher found it and returned it to him two days later.  He lost his glasses at his dads house, luckily his brother knew where they were but a month later, after I bought him a new pair he finally found them.

Losing things has always been a problem for him and most of the time I lose my patience with him and get angry but over the past two weeks I've been trying my best to let him deal with the consequences.  Thursday morning I was willing to let him go shoeless at school, but again he got lucky when he realized that he had another pair of dress shoes in his closet. 

He went without glasses the first several days of school.  No Math book or note taking spirals for two days in a couple classes, he managed to survive but I told him if they weren't found the replacement cost would be paid by him. 

I've started trying to live by Mr. B's chemistry teachers motto, "Poor planning on your part does no constitute an emergency on mine." Yes, I could whip out some bible verses or give you the whole "Patience is a virtue" talk, but simply put teenagers need much more grace than we are willing to give. 

We often get upset with teens because "we know better" and maybe we do but they are pretty sure that we don't so trying to convince them is pretty useless.  Yes, we've been there. Yes, we've all made the same mistakes but they need to make them as well, otherwise they will have missed an opportunity to grow and learn.

I tried to stay out of Mr B's school life until I realized that he was falling behind in several of his classes.  I know that he was trying to work it out but letting him struggle so early in the school year wasn't a good idea.  I got his Guidance Counselor involved and then took a step back and let her handle it.  When I realized that he was failing three of his classes, I did the same thing and really because I saw the frustration that he was having at night and because of it the peace in the house was being disturbed.

We can teach our kids to make good choices but they are the ones that have to make the choice so often letting them make the wrong one is the best policy.  We all learn quickly in our adult lives that every choice whether good or bad leads to some sort of consequence.  Fortunately/Unfortunately for Mr. B, he's learning that at an early age.