Tuning the boy

Mary was out at a meeting yesterday evening, and before transitioning from homework to TV time I paused Graham in the living room, where we had a small basket of laundry to fold. Graham asks me: "So I asked mom and I guess I should ask you: when you were in high school was there anything you weren't good at?" I assured him that there were plenty of things: science, scoring goals, high-level leadership, music (even though I organized our monstrous reggae band, I wasn't very good at my instrument, which is no surprise, since I had never played it before), basketball... The list of things I sucked at was actually longer than the list of things I was good at. We just don't talk as much about the things we're not good at.

Graham is beginning to perceive a fair amount of pressure. Natalie got into Yale, I went there, Mary went there, his friends are getting increasingly geared for the long game of high school. There are even those who question aloud whether the pressure-cooker atmosphere of East Chapel Hill is right for Graham. It could be that it isn't.

But I have to believe that he can make it through. Natalie has exceptional drive and discipline, it is true, but also just a good groove about her. She and her friends are so incredibly supportive of one another. In many ways many attributes the stereotypically sisterly components of female gender coding has just plain worked for her, have carried her through. We need to figure out how to harness some of that for Graham, to get him to knit better with his friends.

He and Jake had a blow up a few weeks back, Graham got frustrated and tossed a chess board that he and Jake were playing. Almost certainly Graham was losing, which would have annoyed and threatened him. Graham sent an apologetic email after mom figured it out and coached him. I wonder if a follow-up phone call or in-person conversation might not be in order. Email is better than nothing, but actual human contact is better even.