Kids.

This week, progress reports came home and I was anxious to see how Brenna was doing in school, because I wanted to see if she gives her teacher as hard a time at school that she gives me at home, each night when it’s time to do/check her homework. The girl hates to do homework and every night, it’s a struggle to get her going. Even more so, when it comes to reading, I can’t get the girl to read more than two sentences before she’s whining that she’s done for the day with school.

Now, her cousins, all of her cousins, have rollerblades, Megan and McKenna got their rollerblades for Christmas, her other cousins Cheridan and Chaylene got theirs because their spoiled by their grandma and she caved and bought them some last weekend. Now Brenna is dying for some and I told her that if she gets good grades that I’ll buy her some for her birthday. But she’s got to prove to me that she deserves new rollerblades. So we made a deal, she would get good grades and for her birthday, I would buy her a pair of rollerblades and she’ll have a party at the rollerskating rink so she can get her roll bounce on too. She’s got to read for fifteen minutes a day and this week, all she’s done is whine, whine, whine about it, it’s been slowly driving me insane.

It’s really strange, because I’m addicted to books, I’m addicted to everything that has to do with books, with collecting them, reading them, buying them, frankly I’m nuts for books. I’m an avid reader and I’ve read to my daughter when she was younger, storytime before bed was always our thing, up until a few years ago. We just stopped reading before bed time, because she would always read with her cousins, I figured she was done with story time with me, not a big deal to me, since it gave me more time to savor my books.

Last year when she was in Kindergarten, I didn’t have problems with her wanting to read or do her homework, in fact, she loved both activities. But this year, it’s like she’s suffering from Senioritis (go figure, senioritis in first grade, eh?) or something because the girl gripes about doing her homework everyday.

It’s enough to drive a saint to drink.

Even with all of whining and griping, she gets her homework done every night, there isn’t a night that we don’t sit at the kitchen table for what seems like hours while she cries about how she can’t find the answers and she doesn’t know the answers until she gets the answers and finishes her homework. Some nights I want to strangle her because she doesn’t apply herself to her studies. But her homework gets done, I make sure of it.

And so yesterday when she brought her progress report, I didn’t know what to expect, but I wasn’t expecting what she got.

Now for progress reports, it wasn’t a grade or anything, it was just little notes of where she’s at in the curriculum right now, if she’s completing her homework and turning it in on time and if she’s got citizenship problems or whatever.

At her teacher’s conference last month, her teacher had nothing but nice things to say about her, she’s a delight to have in class, she’s a role model to the other students, she tries hard and even though she may not be the first person to get everything, she always tries. I was a happy camper.

When I got her progress report, I could have sworn I was reading about some other student who wasn’t my daughter. In a nutshell this is what it said:

Brenna needs to improve in her reading as she’s reading four levels below everyone else her age, she needs to reach this reading goal before March 12, 2006. She’s been distracted at school, not completing her class assignments and her math skills needs improvement as well. Please contact me if you have any questions.

I’m really stumped on the math skills thing, because Brenna loves math. That’s the only part of homework that I don’t have to hound her to complete. She’s always helping her cousins with their math homework and I have even busted her once for DOING her cousin McKenna’s math homework, so where on earth could this be coming from?

My mom says I’m not paying enough attention to her and maybe she’s right. I can’t think of anything else that could make Brenna behave the way she is right now. She’s 6 years old and more times than most, I’ll wake up in the morning and she’ll be sleeping beside me. I have told her time and time again that she’s too old to be sleeping with me and she’ll start off the night in her own bed, but end up in mine before morning time. Something IS bothering her, but every time I ask her about it, she either acts out or she hugs me close.

It really breaks my heart because I don’t know what is bothering her and I don’t know how to fix it. I hope that all of this is just a phase and that it’ll pass, but I can’t help but think that she’s starting to realize that our little family isn’t the same as everyone elses. While everyone has both their moms and dad’s, she’s only got me. *sigh*

I’m going to call Brenna’s teacher to see what’s going on later on, so I’ll keep you (all three of you, hehe) updated on what happens on that count. About the other things….

Wish me luck.