Grade four has begun ( know, I know, I sense your mild panic, me too). His best friend isn’t in his class, but a couple of his other buddies are, so it’s all okay. Apparently now that they are in grade four, they no longer have ‘playdates,’ they ‘hang out,’ and they don’t ‘play’ at recess, they ‘chill.’ Good to have all the correct lingo established already.

He likes both his French and his English teachers, and his homeroom teacher is his French teacher. Instead of having everything in French (except his English classes) for the first half of the year and then switching to all English (except for French classes) for the last half of the year, this year they are doing 50/50 all the way through. Apparently a parent complained that they thought English was being short-changed last year (what? seriously? did this parent not do the math?), so it’s being done this way. Whatever.

The kids don’t have their agendas yet, as there was a printing error (oops), but they should be in by the end of this week. They’re slipping easily into homework by reviewing last year’s concepts. I was too burnt out and lacking in the energy necessary to deal with 200+ strangers at meet-the-teacher night, so HRH went, bless him. The list of chapter books they’re reading in English is terrific, and the units of discovery they have set are exciting! For example, one is theatre from classical antiquity through the Renaissance! Sparky’s as excited about that one as I am. Apparently part of this unit is music/art history/dance exploration of the associated eras, so how cool is that?

You may remember his appeal to drop cello at the end of last season. I revisited the topic a couple of times casually throughout the summer. The first round of the cello conversation went like this:

Me: I think we need to talk about why you’d like to stop entirely or take a longer break than just the summer.
Sparky: Well, I don’t like doing lessons on weekends. I want to spend time with everyone in the family, not just you.
Me: Well, that’s a good reason. We could do lessons on Friday nights, and switch our family board game night to Saturdays.
Sparky: OH, NO. We are *not* switching game night! We can stick with doing lessons on weekends. *runs off*
Me: Um… okay.

My Twitter comment at the time was: “So… I think that’s resolved? Kind of? I’ll check again tomorrow.”

A week later I sat down with him and explained that I had overlooked something. While I accept that I have to sit through his lessons and his half of the group class because I’m his parent, it’s kind of unfair to expect him to have to sit through my lesson and my half of the group class, too. That extra time plus the 45-minute commute before and after means that on weekends where we do a lesson and a group class, he’s losing two whole half-days out of his weekend. And you know, he’s nine, and he has his own stuff he wants to do. So while he considered various options (like a local teacher for him so he wouldn’t lose so much of his weekend time to waiting through my lesson and my group class) he ended up deciding that no, he really wanted to step away for a while. Okay, I said, but he would have to come to our first scheduled lesson of the season so he could discuss it with our teacher, as she might have some valuable observations and input.

I was so proud of him. He didn’t crumple in on himself or try to hide; he sat straight and explained that he thought he’d like to try something else for a while, thank you, hopefully some art classes. And my teacher handled it beautifully, being so supportive, telling him that he had music in his heart and only asking that he not ignore his cello, to pick it up and just mess around with it for fun, and giving him a hug. At that point he had to excuse himself to go to the bathroom, blinking furiously. So there we are.

He has already asked to do some drawing, painting, and sculpture instead, and our local arts centre (who runs the summer camp he did for two years) offers exactly that course for nine to twelve-year-olds, at a very affordable price. And they even allow mid-session registration, which I’m assuming we’ll need by this point. So I’ll be following up on that this week.

And this also means I get cello back to myself. It’s been fun sharing it with him, but now my time spent at lessons and classes is now only my own, too. And I can go back to weekly lessons, since I’ll be able to afford it, even taking his art lessons into account. It looks like everyone wins.