Magically Bad Day

I usually get a pretty good gauge of my son’s day at school within seconds of stepping into the house after I return home from work in the evening.

If Kai runs over to greet me and eagerly encourages me to look at his Point Sheet, then I know that he must have had a very good day.

If he is engrossed in his iPad and greets me in a friendly, but distracted way, then I know that he had a good, but not especially great, day.

And if he comes over and says, “Dad, whatever you do, do NOT look at my Point Sheet!” well, I know that he did not have a good day.

And that is how it was when I came home last night.

I heard my wife telling him to go get his Point Sheet. He had apparently hidden it somewhere and she could not find it.

He told her, “Mom, don’t let Dad see my Point Sheet.” Apparently Mom is allowed to see it but Dad is not.

I don’t yell at him if he’s had a bad day, but I do like to hear what happened. Oftentimes I will then talk with him about how he could have handled a situation differently. I don’t think I am being unreasonably harsh, but my wife says that Kai is scared to show me his Point Sheet on these days.

After much urging, he finally brought it over. But then he folded it up and hid it. “See? I did magic! It’s gone!”

Eventually he made it reappear and I got to take a look at it. 71%. Not as bad as I was anticipating after all that drama, but bad enough that he had lost his iPad privileges at home for the day.

Kai never likes to talk about what happened that caused his score to be so low. And it wasn’t so bad so we did not get an email from his teacher to explain anything. So we are left a bit in the dark on this one.

I just hope that when I get home from work tonight, there will be no need for any magic tricks.