My brother is a terrible writer, as I think I mentioned last week. It's not that he can't write, but he needs some one on one focus and some very specific but simple training. All of that is ok. He and I are working on it and I really think he could be in gear for the limited writing he'll do in college with an engineering major.
I suppose I should say that he and I were working on it. My mom took over, partly because Kyle wasn't smart enough to plan so that I could really look at the work and partly because she doesn't like when others are in control of what's
hers .
He has rolling admissions and someone needs to push him through this. He couldn't or wouldn't do it on his own. She might have just felt like she had some momentum left after Kyle needed her to look at the common app and pushed through. I don't really know.
What I do know is that she stopped being "helpful" to the cause yesterday. She's fine at correcting but she doesn't get the kind of one on one detail work that needs to be done. She doesn't get that because you can correct it all in one draft doesn't mean you should (not if you want Kyle to pull something from the mess anyway). She doesn't get that oral correction is like you never did anything. She doesn't get that even written corrections just don't get translated over to the paper because Kyle can't copy word for word and he's so unsure about his work and his own instincts he won't correct stuff in the essay that doesn't make sense to him because he knows that's part of what you wrote down so the not making sense bit is all in his head.
Basically she doesn't get that beyond coaching Kyle in writing and compensating for some of his learning disabilities, I'm coaching him in confidence and doing my utmost to make sure that he understands, can do what I did, and feels good about where he is and the progress he's making. It isn't easy and I don't lie to him about anything. If it's bad I say so, but the trick is not to belabor that point. I tell him we all come in at different starting points and there's nothing we can do about where we start, we can only do something about where we move to. I always stress that we can move this to A work The piece is going to finish strong. I focus on the improvements from last time how he stopped doing x and that was great or I could tell he understood and really worked to keep tense together. To be honest how he picks up and integrates what he understands is very promising.
Anyway, my mom has been yelling for two days and it's getting more insulting and personal each day. We all know she has her limits and snaps. We all knew she'd already broken down on this issue once and was therefor more likely to go crazy over it a second time.
I don't get it. I don't understand what she thinks she'll accomplish yelling at Kyle telling him he's stupid and he can't do the work and his attempts are pathetic. I don't get how I can sit and explain what I'm doing, why I'm doing it and point to some positive results and she can still come in and shit on it all.
I don't get what Kyle was thinking when he didn't jump on this after the first time she went ape shit crazy. I know how demotivating she can be. I know she can shake you in a lot of cruel and hard ways. You know I get the hesitation and I get that the quality of work is going to be less than it was before because now you're shaky. I don't get not trying to dodge all the abuse and crazy you can.
I don't get the whole deal.
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