THE SMALL SUCCESSES

Whether they are big or small, successes should be celebrated. Every success being a stepping stone to the next achievement. Building blocks towards a larger goal. In today’s case, it was my son getting through the last day of the fifth six-week grading cycle.

The grading cycles before this one proved to be a challenge in several ways. My preoccupation with work and getting caught up in unnecessary conversations on social media, in addition to our planning a trip to The Netherlands for Winter break, took my focus away from monitoring my son’s progress in school. We both got off track, but vowed to do better. And we both did.

At first, I had set an unrealistic goal of him needing to get all As. ‘You’re just like Papa!’, he exclaimed when I first brought up that idea. That proved to be quite stressful to my son and completely unnecessary. Progress was a better solution. As long as he did better than last time, that was all that mattered.

He worked hard every day by completing all his homework and turning it in on time. He did not wait until the final hour to submit late work. He knows my views on both procrastination and being late in general. In that case, I am quite the opposite of his father, who is always late to everything. If we return to the question of pet peeves, that would be another one of mine.

On a daily basis, my son would check his grades. Most of the time, more than once a day. He wanted to make sure nothing was left undone. The result of all his hard work and diligence was a mixture of As and Bs, which I find quite impressive when compared with the last six weeks.

Positive reinforcement is a much better motivator than the negative reinforcement of being grounded. I let my son know if his grades showed an improvement from the last grading cycle, we would go to MOD Pizza and he would get something else. Since we rarely go out to eat, MOD is a treat and his favourite pizza place. The ‘something else’ he would get this weekend. A new game for his Oculus Quest.

Knowing how much he despises school, with its absurd rules like not being allowed to go to the bathroom for an hour and a half, I knew we needed to celebrate the nearing of the end of this school year. As for the next six weeks, all As would be nice, but it is the progress that matters. Even the small successes need to be acknowledged and celebrated.