Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Just Hand Me My "Bad Mommy" Award and Let's Be Done with It!

T. and I read about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in our Bible study, and one of us commented that the rain of fire and brimstone sounded like a volcano. "How about we look it up on the internet and see what the historical evidence is for Sodom and Gomorrah being destroyed by a volcano?" I cleverly suggested. I did have enough sense to send T. off on some errand while I found a good site, but he came back too quickly and started reading over my shoulder while I was still browsing through the Wikipedia article. I was browsing and scrolling Quickly, since the material was really inappropriate, but that impossible child, the same kid who couldn't find the word "legislative" to answer the question of which branch of government makes laws in two hours of staring at four short pages of The Story of the World, instantly spotted a particularly noxious phrase and asked me "What is **** ***?" I answered, "Nothing you need to worry about," and moved on, but My Gosh! First, how Stupid must I be to decide to do a little research on Sodom and Gomorrah with my nine year old, of all things? Pretty stupid, I guess. Second, why won't that kid direct his attention where I want it? Ed helped him with science today and, after lecturing me in the morning to be more patient (I do my best, but after the fifth or sixth bad guess about the answer to 99 - 98*, I'll admit that I got a bit tetchy), he lost patience and told me that "That boy has an attention problem and needs Drugs." I don't think it Is and attention problem, and I don't think he needs drugs. What he needs is to be persuaded that his school subjects are full of forbidden and tantalizing information. Then we'd be home free.

*Just to reassure those who might be concerned, he later finished the rest of the math assignment, on his own, with no mistakes at all. And the rest of the problems were much harder than that first one that he convinced himself he couldn't possibly solve.

**The information on Sodom and Gomorrah, once we got to the part I wanted, was actually sort of interesting. Apparently geologists say the best evidence is that it wasn't a volcano, but that it could well have been an earthquake.

***The irony of this business is that I checked at our library last Friday for a book on "the birds and the bees" (T. asked for "the birds and the bees" speech and was rather taken aback when I asked if he wanted to know how babies are made. He thought the speech was about birds and bees. He figured I might as well give him the speech anyway, though, but I told him that I needed time to think about it.) and I failed to find a book that talked about eggs being fertilized and growing into babies without any mechanical information of the "tab A into slot B" variety. Happily, when I double checked with T. he said he was no longer interested in the subject. So now we stumble over stuff that makes my earlier "daintiness" pretty insignificant, eh? On the plus side, T. is ignorant enough about anatomical terms that he really had no idea of what the phrase he found meant.





We finally got through the African Savanna part of My World Science and up to the section on Sound & Light/Electricity & Magnets. I've been looking forward to this, but not enough that I managed to have all the right supplies on hand. Today's most fun experiment (though they were all good) called for a 1.5 volt bulb, a 1.5 volt battery, and a 4.5 volt battery. Only, we didn't have a 1.5 watt bulb, and our bulb was too big to be powered by those wimpy little batteries. So Ed found something bigger. It starts our van on a regular basis, and it lit that little bulb just fine.

3 comments:

Wisteria said...

What an exciting school day! We got into a similar touchy situation last year when I had the bright idea to read (unabridged) the Old Testament. What a can of worms that was. I had forgotten the questionable behaviors presented.

Unknown said...

I had THE conversation with Mary shortly after Robbie was born last year. With each successive baby her questions became more detailed - to the point that babies come from God and the hospital no longer satisfied her. The positive from the conversation is that now she believes making them is gross and having them is painful - so I have succeeded in promoting abstinence, and getting her to leave DH and I alone.
Amy

Melora said...

Wisteria,
You're not kidding about the stuff in the OT! That is where I get the toughest questions (and I almost never have really satisfactory answers). I was just glad that T. didn't seem to notice when Lot offered to send out his unmarried daughters in place of the visitors that the wicked Sodom crowds wanted. How do you explain that?

Amy,
Well, at least you got it over with, and with the right message (this is no fun -- wait 'til you are married and can't avoid it!). With any luck, she will pass it along to her younger siblings, and you are off the hook.