When Your Kid’s Name Isn’t Called

So the other day I did something exceptionally brave.

Or maybe, in hindsight, really dumb.

I went to my son's 7th grade awards program.

Now - no one told me to go to his awards program. I didn't get a note, or a text, or an email from one of his teachers or his principals suggesting I might come. (Though my friend Karim, whose son Carlos is super smart, didn't either, and she went. So there's a little reasoning for you that I wasn't completely crazy.) I almost texted a teacher friend to ask if I should go, but if I'm being honest, I was actually afraid of what she might say. So, no, no one told me to go to the awards program the other day.

I just went. And not without a whole lot of hope.

It's been a tough year, y'all.

My husband, Cliff, was deployed for most of it and he left for stateside training and mobilization in California about three weeks before Caleb started school. The day he left U.S. soil for Aghanistan was also the same day I picked our 12-going-on-20-year-old son up in the car line and his first question to me was "Mom, how old were you when you first started dating?"

Hello, teenage hormones. What nice timing you have.

(And just in case you only have girls and can't imagine that boys go hormone crazy too - let me make it clear - THEY DO. They very.much.do. I have the slamming doors, rolling the eyes one minute and giving me a big hug and "I love you Mom" in the next minute stories to prove it. Teen boys go just as nuts as teen girls. So I guess we're all lucky. Lucky us.)

The first semester was evil horrible awful. We spent HOURS at the table every night doing homework that should have only taken an hour or so. I was part cheerleader, drill sergeant and prison warden. When I wasn't helping him after school, I was doing online research during the day, trying to find extra help in what he was studying and looking for why he was having such a hard time. We tried rewarding for good grades. Consequences for bad. But nothing seemed to really help. I felt like I was homeschooling without actually having him HOME to SCHOOL. I was also beginning to wonder if someone had re-enrolled me in middle school as a terribly twisted joke because didn't I already go through Algebra 1 (and did JUST AS BAD THEN AS I WAS DOING NOW?! Okay, I was doing worse now, because according to my son's math teacher, that is "not how you do it." Thanks Common Core. Appreciate it.) 

I checked his grades hourly daily and had reoccuring heart paralysis every time the screen came up with "Your child has received a FAILING GRADE TODAY." Which makes me ask the question -why can't they do that for really good grades too? Just to help even out the emotional extremes? Because if I'm honest, I didn't see "Your child has received a FAILING GRADE TODAY..." I just saw "HEY MOM - YOU FAIL! YOUR CHILD DIDN'T MAKE THE CUT TODAY."

If you're a mom of an only child, you will understand this - because when you only have one - you only have one. You are ONE and DONE. You don't have any more chances to get it right. There are no first pancakes in an only child situation. If this kid doesn't live up to your every dream, you don't have three more chances to alter your parenting methods and come out with a different outcome. When you have one child - this is it. When you're the parent of an Only, it's the Olympics, the Triple Crown, the World Series, and Miss America all rolled into one, and right or wrong, as a mom, you can feel all (both real and imagined) eyes on you when your child isn't successful - because after all, you only have one, right? What's the problem? What are you not doing right?

Add all of that to the emotions and exhaustion of a deployment, and you've got serious pressure going on. All I could think was, I cannot let my son fail 7th grade while his dad's gone.

By Christmas break, I'd tried everything. I knew Caleb was trying. I knew he was tired of the bad grades and I knew he was working hard in his classes and studying at home. But nothing was getting better. It was time to look for other reasons why he was struggling. After some testing, evaluations and input from his teachers and by his doctor, we not only had a better idea of what we were dealing with, but also a plan in place to help him improve.

During the second semester, we saw a turn around. It wasn't an overnight miracle, but gradually, his grades started improving, and I could see his confidence returning. We no longer had to spend hours at the table trying to finish homework. He could do his work, and I could check it after he was finished. As and Bs were starting to come home. The online grade sheet wasn't yelling at me nearly as much about failing grades.  Life was starting to feel a little less like one big middle school study hall.

And then he got sick. No fever, but a headache that wouldn't stop and vomiting at least twice a day.

Every. single. day.

His doctor ran every kind of test and nothing tested positive. At first she thought virus, then flu, then maybe migraines. When it was finally over, he had missed 22 days of school.

I'll spare you all of the details, but after more doctor visits and hospital admittances than he's had in his whole life leading up to this mystery illness, they were finally able to stop the headache and nausea. And about two weeks later we got a more conclusive test back that showed he'd indeed had Mono. It's sad when you're happy it was mono and not chronic migraines. I just wish we'd known that six weeks earlier.

Despite missing all of that time in school, I'd tried my best to keep him up on his homework and classwork teachers sent home, and miracle of miracles, the week before the awards program, his grades were posting happy looking As and Bs. SERIOUSLY. He had to come down with Mono for something to click and his studying to improve?

So I went to his awards program, because surely he might get SOMETHING. Like Most Improved? After this crazy year, he really needed an award.

Ok, let's be honest. This mama needed an AWARD.

So there I sat, in the mom rows, with all of the other award-expecting, camera-toting mothers, holding my breath as I listened to Perfect Attendance names get called. Yeah, that wasn't going to be Caleb. Those were the kids who gave everyone else viruses and colds because their parents sent them to school whether they were sick or not. I'm now starting to see the Perfect Attendance strategy...  I chatted softly with my friend Karim, cooed over her little baby girl in her arms, and took a picture of my friend LiliBeth's son getting an award, since I knew she was at work and couldn't be there herself.

Come on Most Improved... 

They got to the C-average award, given to students who maintained a 2. 5-2.9 GPA or better all year. They call this one the Thumbs Up Award, and my friend Karim looked over at me excitedly, her eyes looking hopeful, and said, "Oh, I bet this could be Caleb's!"

I chuckled and leaned over to her. "I HATE this award," I said. "It's like the "Sorry you couldn't make As and B's" award." She smiled as she shook her head and rolled her eyes at me. Did I mention she's a doctor? Super smart. Her son has her brain genes. He does not get the Thumbs Up award. Caleb got mine unfortunately (aren't you proud that I didn't say his father's?). But I listened patiently to the list of students, and tried not to sigh too loudly when Caleb's name wasn't called. Yeah, there was at least one grade that first semester that might have knocked him out of the running for that one... the same one that kept him from going on his band trip with all of his friends when he was forced to stay behind with all of the "bad kids" who got in trouble for various things like throwing books or running when they shouldn't have been, or not listening to a teacher. Caleb's sin was not passing one too many tests. Like I said, it was a rough year.

Come on Most Improved... don't they give out an award for Most Improved?

By the time they got to the straight As all year long awards and not one but SIX mamas sitting around me all pulled out their smart phones at once and started videoing, it hit me that my son's name was not going to be called.

Like, at all.

There was no award for Most Improved.

That Thumbs Up piece of paper was suddenly looking pretty good.

I sat and glanced at my 13-year-old several rows in front of me, whose face is in that weird ablong-shaped no-longer-a-little-boy-but-not-quite-a-man stage. He'd glanced over his shoulder at me, his face saying what he probably knew I was thinking. No award. Sorry.

As the rest of the program wrapped up, I sat there, in the middle of the straight A mom section, and tried to push down the frustration bubbling to the top. I'm competitive by nature. Usually with myself. But I've always tried hard not to be THAT parent that pushes her kid to be what he's not. Which hasn't been easy. He's laid back, like his daddy. Doesn't always have a plan for the future, let alone for tomorrow. He just lives life. Doesn't have to have a strategy. Doesn't even have to have a goal. He's happy. He's content. Just being him. His video-game playing, tv-watching him.

It drives me CRAZY.

As his mom, and someone who has always had a plan and a passion, I've worried that his contentment - while a highly desired trait if you're, maybe, a funeral home director or, I don't know, GHANDI, will hold him back or that having no obvious outright passion in this crazy fast world we live in will cause him to miss out on things. It's probably why I'm always encouraging him to try new stuff. I've even told him that I wouldn't care if he makes below-average grades if he were interested in something else - like bike mechanics.

Or underwater fishing.

Mission work. No, I don't mind if you decide to go to Africa.

SOMETHING.

I keep looking for the day he'll find the "thing" that gets him running in the race instead of contentedly hanging out on the side, cheering everyone else on as they run by.

But as I sat in that seat, with beaming-for-good-reason parents all around me because they'd heard their kids names get called, God reminded me that Caleb hasn't grown up completely void of anything I might have passed onto him.

He might not be running in hot pursuit of something right now at the ripe old age of 13, but he also doesn't run after what everyone else is running after. He never has. When he was just a little guy in water wings, and all the other kids were jumping off the side of the pool, he'd run with just as much energy DOWN.THE.STAIRS into the shallow end and splash around with the rest of them.

He makes his own decisions and follows his own gut and usually most of the time makes the right choices, regardless of what friends or others his age are doing. And in that way, he is his own person. He is thinking outside the proverbial everyman box. In his own way, he's pursuing the path God's laying out for him.

NOT the path his mama keeps trying to shovel or put down in front of him in a neat five-step plan.

So, no, I didn't hear my kid's name called at the awards program this year.

I don't have any pictures to share on FB with the countless other moms in my news feed excitedly proclaiming how smart or how athletic or how all-around great students their children are.

I know there are other mamas who are in the same boat. Mamas of middle school boys who haven't yet figured out why studying is important, mamas of high school juniors who would much rather be hanging out with friends than learning anything, mamas of kids who - you name the reason - just haven't made the grade. Mamas like my friend whose child is severely autistic, who shook her head and chuckled at me when I shared this story the other day with her. She's never heard her son's name called for an award. But it doesn't mean she still doesn't wish at times that she could. There's some perspective for you.

So I didn't hear my kid's name this year - but I can be confident - and content (ok, I'm working on that last one) - that my son's name has already been called by God Himself when He brought him into this world and gave me the absolute privilege and blessing of being his mama. That God knows Caleb's name because Caleb knows God's - and I can be thankful he made that eternal decision and commitment way before we were ever thinking about getting some trophy or certificate at a school awards day. I can breathe easier as I focus less on what I think he should be growing up to be, and instead be prayerfully confident God's growing him up to be who He's called him to be.

Bottom line?

I have no idea who my son is going to become or what he's going to do, whether he will ever have awards in his future, or not, whether he will ever be recognized for anything outside of just being his cute sweet and sometimes teenage awkward and moody self (though, come on, of course I still hope he does - I'm his mama, after all.) But just as Hannah committed her precious son Samuel to the Lord, each and every day I have to do the same with my Caleb. I also have to remind myself that God knows what He's doing and He knows where He's leading my son. (and it's really ok if I never get the memo.)

It's God's job to lead my son to where He wants him to go, just as He lead me when I was growing up (have I really grown up?). It's my job as his mom to pray for him, encourage him, and watch him get there.

And when that day happens? You can bet I'll be the one cheering the loudest.

Yes, I'll be THAT mom.

I AM that mom.

So, like me, if you're struggling with the perfect kid envy virus that seems to hit about this time of year when all of the other parents around you are touting their kids successes and grand accomplishments, making it even more painfully clear that your child is NOT a perfect kid -  can I just encourage you that it's ok?

That for all of the seemingly perfect awards and wonderful honors so many of our friends children have, they also have their own hangups and struggles and problems you just don't know about?

That maybe, some of them might even be wishing their kids could be more laid back like yours, and not so stressed out they're in tears if they don't make As on everything?

Hey, it could happen.

Enjoy your summer free of grade-checking and homework-prodding. And every once in awhile, just for fun, call your child's name. He still needs to hear it.