“Who cares about spelling? It doesn’t matter!” My 11-year-old son flung his spelling book onto the kitchen table.
Can you believe he said that to his mother–the writer?
Dad brought out the big guns. “We warned you all week to work on this. If you don’t get an 80% or better on tomorrow’s test, there will be NO video games this weekend.”
The evening was already drawing to a close and my son could barely spell any of the words on his list, much less 80% of them. He knew he was doomed to fail. He didn’t care about the grade, but he did care about his precious game time.
So, he pulled out his own weapons. Tears. Whines. Angry outbursts. Stomping feet. Of course, he got himself banished to his room. This was going to be a loooooooong weekend.
Surprisingly, the next day he popped out of school with a grin on his face. “I did it! I got 88%!”
My mouth dropped open as I took the paper from him and scanned it. “How in the world did you do that? Last night you couldn’t spell any of them.”
He looked a little sheepish. “Well, I bawled. And I prayed. And I studied.”
His honesty brought a smile to my face. “Bawl, pray, study. Sounds like you found a system that works for you. Are you going to do that again next week?”
“Well,” he took the paper back and shoved it into his book bag. “Maybe I’ll skip the bawling part. I think I’ll just pray and study.”
I’m going to try to keep that in mind the next time I’m faced with a challenge that seems impossible. I’ll try to skip the bawling, and just pray and study.