How to insult your maths homework book

Bright Eyes is pretty talented with numbers. In fact, in Year 5, he's been given the same maths homework book as the children in Year 6 in his composite class. 

As many of my readers here will know, he's also pretty talented with insults. Almost every day something comes out of his mouth that sounds rude, difficult and angry. Things like:

"You're a liar."

"You've got a stupid head."

"Don't be a fun-spoiler."

This morning, while he was doing his maths homework, I learned something about the insults. 

Last year he did his Year 4 maths in a flash. He rarely had a question about anything. He could do it all. This year, doing Year 6 work, it's not quite so easy. A couple of times this morning he found himself in difficulties. Either he didn't understand the question, or he needed to be talked through the logic of a problem. 

And every time he found it hard, instead of saying what every other kid would say, which is, "This is hard, I don't get it," he said these things:

"It's lying!"

"It's stupid."

"It should be shot."

Oddly enough, this gave me hope. If he's busy wishing that maths questions would die just because they are a little bit hard, it makes me realise that he doesn't hate me. If I'm the one on the end of the insults, it just means that right at that moment, he finds what he's doing to be difficult.

I'm going to try to coach him through using appropriate language when he comes across difficulties with his maths. If he can learn to say, "This is hard, I'm not enjoying it," for school work, maybe he'll be able to be more realistic about his feelings around other difficult things. 

And maybe, just maybe, one day I won't be the WORST MOTHER IN THE WORLD who is also a LIAR and a CHEAT and who definitely is a MEMBER OF THE BAD PARENT CLUB.