“Mom, sometimes I feel like I’m not even alive!”

“Oh! What does that feel like?”

“Like I’m not even there. Like there’s a big black blank in my head, almost like I’m blind. I try not to go to my non-real life when I’m at school.

“It’s just weird,” Barney goes on. “It’s like I’m not even paying attention to anything, either, like I’m dead.”

I said “Maybe that’s what’s happening when your teacher is talking to you and you don’t seem to hear her.”

“No, I always make sure I stay focused when I’m at school, so I don’t go to my non-real life. It just happens on the bus and when I’m in bed and when I’m listening to music.

“Also, I can never tell when I’m asleep.”

I can’t explain this to him, so I react in a casual way, and haven’t heard any more about it. Maybe I should teach him to meditate.

His teacher (Barney’s in Grade 5) had been complaining that he doesn’t pay attention, that he seemed zoned-out, that he looked right through her, didn’t hear instructions, didn’t turn in his homework and projects, and so on and so forth. This was in spite of my making him do his homework each day; he wouldn’t seem to know that there was any homework or assignment expected, and I’d find out about it later. No amount of urging could get him to be “on top of it.”

So I said well, this can’t continue. From now on, if your homework and projects aren’t done, you won’t be permitted to play your Playstation games on the weekends. And if your teacher sends me a note on Wednesdays, stating that your assignments are up to date, I will let you play your games for an hour on that day as well as on the weekends.

It worked like magic. It was too easy.

xoxo
etc