Worrying Vicariously through My Kids

Well, ok, this title is a little wrong. If it were actually literally true, it would be my kids worrying and me sitting around feeling relaxed about life and playing video games. What I really mean is a bit of turn on the old "living vicariously through our children." Rather than "living" through mine, I feel I am so often worrying on their behalf.

Today's examples

Case #1: Caleb has a fever, chills, congestion, and, well, let's just say I'm REALLY glad he can sit on the potty now! The little guy is not feeling well, AT ALL. Meanwhile, I can't actually know what he's feeling. Does he know the difference between his throat and his neck. He told me earlier that his tongue hurts and he's been sticking his finger down his throat. Could it be Strep? When he had chills this evening his hands and feet were cold and his body looked sort of splotchy, but in a weird sort of circulatory system checking-in kind of way. Hmm, viral or bacterial? He's on Benadryl and I went ahead and got the Amoxicillan prescription filled tonight. In the end, I just want to ask him -- "Does it hurt when you bend your head to your neck?" The ol' let's rule out meningitis test. I feel like I'm worrying and don't have the foggiest idea what's going on in his little body. I give him the meds, put him to bed and pray that his fever doesn't spike in the night.

Case #2: Here's the real motivator for this particular post: Kara and school. When I was growing up, as soon as I knew how to do averages, I would keep track of all of my grades and figure out my own averages all throughout the quarter so that I would know exactly what I was getting come report card time. This does not come as a suprise to most of you. I'm uptight. We know that. I've even been known to ask the teacher if I could copy down all of my grades that were in her grade book just to be sure I hadn't missed anything. I've also been known to configure things in different ways, ie. 10 homework grades averaged together as one grade plus 2 test grades averaged divided by two to weight the tests vs. 12 grades divided by 12. If you haven't given up yet on what I'm saying, maybe you're as nuts about this as I am, or maybe you're just wondering where I'm going with all of this.

So, here I am as a parent. Last year my first born had spent the better portion of the quarter failing spelling and muddling through math. Along comes report card time and she's genuinely suprised to see a B and a C on her report card. I honestly believe that she just figured the teacher pulled out the reports cards, scratched her head, sized up each kid and bam that'ss where the grades came from. As if her teacher were not assessing her abilities and skills, but rather summing up her person in a couple of letters. Here's the kicker, Kara did not actually care about the grades themselves. She was deeply bothered because she had heard that Krispy Kreme gives free donuts for A's and she didn't have any!

Fast forward to today. Today was the last day of the first six weeks. When I learned this I immediately pulled out all of Kara's graded papers and came up with a letter grade for each subject based on all known grades. I was thrilled. It looks like we might be looking at two A's, a B and two C's or possibly two A's, two B's and a C. Either way I'm thinking this is pretty good considering some of Kara's struggles last year. Meanwhile, here I am calculating her grades as if they were my own and in many ways more concerned about them than she is!