The Boy.

Today was math test day. When I got home I took out his folder and went through his papers. Asked him how his day was and how his math test went.  He said his day was good and he did OK on the test. Got some wrong.  Which made me stop in my tracks.. How did he know he got some wrong? So I checked his papers. The test was in the folder. Some wrong ? um. yeah that was an understatement. But besides the point and also not the point of my posting today .

I am going over the test and looking at the markings which are in in green on blue paper. This makes it HARD to see her marks. Maybe she is one of those teachers that feels the red pen is too harsh for little kids? Who knows. All I know is that it annoys the hell outta me. Anyway. There are a couple questions on there that weren't even covered in the 7 page review packet which irked me a tad. But I digress because that is also not the point of this post. I see one marked wrong with the right answer written next to it.  He had to draw in coins 68 cents 2 different ways. The first was 2 quarters, 1 dime, 1 nickel and 3 pennies.. the next was 6 dimes 1 nickel and 3 pennies. So I'm not seeing why it's wrong.  I'm looking at it over and over.. and I show it to my Mom and she agrees it looks right. So I put the paper down for a minute to take care of Alexa.

While I was gone my Mother found out that The Boy added that last penny in on both AFTER THE FACT because he didn't want to get in trouble with us for having it wrong.  I about died. I looked at him and shook my head. He was in tears. I told him he can't change a test after the fact because I was going to send his teacher an email complaining about the mistake on her part etc. and so on. Then I went on to explain that as long as he tries his hardest that he shouldn't be afraid to show us his test.

I felt worse that he was afraid of OUR reaction than I was about him fixing the test. What the hell kind of parent am I that my kid is afraid of us and afraid of bringing home a bad grade??? I pulled Jim aside when he got home before letting him see the test to explain what happened. So he also had a talk with Aedan and we went over the test with him together. We were disappointed that there were a few things on there that we haven't worked on in homework or on the review packet. Seems to be happening with every test.

I told my Mom this was just the beginning.. soon he'll be a computer hacker charging kids to change their grades for beer money...