No complaining tonight

Well, it’s been a couple of days since my last posting. And Puppy did much better with homework last night, and I wanted to cry as I watched him sitting at the dinner table, but I held back my tears.

I had written how Puppy had an anxiety attack the other night because he was stressing over what it is I was going to write to his teacher in our communication notebook. He had been disrespectful and was refusing to do his homework, and this was not good behavior.

Well, I had already texted his teacher as it was happening, so she talked to him and reminded him of the basic rules for behavior. Then she wrote to me that she had taken him aside and discussed with him the behaviors during his study time, and said he shouldn’t complain about doing homework. Although this was necessary for Puppy to understand that we do communicate with each other (Mom and Teacher), it seemed to work in both a good and a bad way.

We went straight home after picking him up from daycare. He asked if he could visit next door, but the neighbors weren’t home. So we changed our clothes and without any trouble asked me for his print-outs to get started on his homework. I gave them to him and left him alone as I started supper.

Now comes the tough part. He called out to me in the saddest voice…”look mom, I’m not complaining.” And then said that I needed to tell his teacher he was not complaining. He had understood what his teacher had told him and followed through. The lump in my throat came when I looked at him sitting there, carefully tracing his words and repeating the same thing…”look mom, I’m not complaining.” I went over to praise him for a good job and he wouldn’t look up at me, instead he said, “I’m sorry I was complaining the other day. I’m not gonna do it again, mom.”

When he finished his work, we sat down to supper. He was quiet mostly, few words were spoken, but a few smiles came from his face, with dimples (an inside joke between us). As we finished up, he then asked if I was going to write that he did “good”. We went to watch TV for a while and he still asked what I was going to write. So I went to the table and opened the notebook. I read out loud as I wrote how well he did his homework…without complaining.

I think Puppy had a good night’s rest that day. I hope I removed some stress off him if even for one night.