Lessons From the Good Book

M. attends Hebrew school on Tuesday afternoons. Like most fourth graders—this former kid included—he would rather not.

It’s hard enough for some kids (read: boys) to get through a seven-hour school day without tacking on another hour and a half of classroom time, even if it is only once a week. It’s even harder for kids with attentional and anxiety disorders; they’re working pretty hard to keep their act together and at some point, it has to come out. There are times we haven’t even left the school parking lot before M. is falling apart.

When I picked him up at school today he very calmly said that he didn’t want to go to Hebrew school. I asked why he felt that way and he didn’t have much of an answer other than, “I just want to go home and relax.” He actually confessed that he could go—meaning, he wouldn’t freak out on the way there and throw his shoes at my head while I was driving—but I wasn’t sure I should force him. The past few days had been extremely rough and my primary goal had become to keep M. calm. I didn’t want to push my luck, so I drove home.

M. went into the kitchen and found on the table some books we had bought for his teachers at the school book fair. He picked up Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, looked it over, and took a seat at the table. He started reading. You have to understand that this is unusual; although M. has many books and enjoys reading, it’s not something he’ll voluntarily do during the day. So he kept reading and I kept my mouth shut. I knew a good thing when I saw it.

I decided to pick up a magazine and join him at the table. I thought if I modeled back the behavior, he would read for a longer period of time. It felt as though I was in my own version of Gorillas in the Mist; except it wasn’t the mountain gorillas of the Rwandan jungle I was trying to blend in with and understand.

After a while, M. asked me to read to him, which I did. In total, he spent about an hour happily—and calmly—reading.

Given how challenging M. has been of late, and how chaotic our household has become, this moment of normalcy was priceless. When you live with a child whose mood—and aggression—flips quickly and unpredictably…these moments are, well… a blessing.

And a far more powerful one than any he might have learned at Hebrew school.