Thursday 9 August

It was a wonderful nor'west day here yesterday. Here in Christchurch a nor'west is a warm wind because it has come from over the mountains, where it has dropped it's rain & then goes across the warm Canterbury Plains to get to Christchurch. It was a wonderful day that just made you think that spring is coming. The birds are tweeting at sunrise now so things are starting to warm up. I got in the garden & lifted 7 strawberry plants & repotted them the rest went to the rubbish. I just need to get out a couple of dandelions & then the garden will be ready for some fresh soil. We'll borrow mum's trailer for the weekend & get soil & hopefully I can get Scott to trim back some of the trees down the back as well.

It wasn't a completely tranquil feeling day because as usual it all comes undone when Brent gets to do homework. This time he complained about it & then sat down & did his maths. He then said "it was so easy I did it in 3 minutes". Yay for that! Then it was time to do his language which was finding as many antonyms as possible & then a bit of spelling. He kicked up a stink about doing that & then when he said he was done he said I was not to look at it. I asked how I would know that he had completed it & he said he had written the time against each thing so therefore he has done it. I then said that he has reading to do & he kicked up a stink about that. In the end I got Scott to hear his reading. After he had gone to bed Scott pulled out his homework & we took a look, no effort had gone into it at all, which is exactly why he didn't want me to see it. Do I push him? or should I just put my hands in the air & say "stuff it, you do it but if it is a poor effort that's your problem" I am really stuck not knowing what to do. He wants to get better marks in his effort card but he doesn't want to put the effort in.

What do I do? Do I push or should I let him face up to the fact that he has to put more effort in to get a better effort card? He gets all angry when he gets a poor effort card but the only thing I know to do to help him is to make him work harder, put the effort in. I am really coming to the end of my tether with this whole thing. That & his attitude. That needs a readjustment too!

The great news of the day was that James finally got his dictionary yesterday! Ever since he has started school there have been some basic words he has had to learn how to read. There are about 60 of them that the teacher thinks are the ones that are used most often & James has had to learn how to read them. They have been broken down into "steps". Step 1 had the easy words like a, is, and, the. It went up to step 6 & then once you have completed step 6 you get your dictionary. James finally got his yesterday so it was a red plate day for him!