Seeking Mommy Proxy

Where exactly on Craigslist would one place an ad for a mommy proxy? Because I need one to fill in for laundry, whining, bathing the dog, and dealing with school stuff. Honestly, I'll do the rest of it if I can just get someone else to deal with school because I am OVER IT.

Every October, as long as Mason has been in school, I have written some variation of this post. That's because every year, we have dealt with the same crap. He's smart, but not focused. He's capable, but not motivated. He's sweet, but too easily distracted. His test scores are great, but he's careless with his work. And on and on and on, and blah, blah, blah, and I am soooooooooo over it.

Not over it in the sense that we don't keep going through the motions. I'm still fully involved in the teacher conferences, emails, supervising homework, checking the agenda, setting goals, reward charts, consequence charts, lectures, motivational speeches, threats, begging- but only in the physical sense. Mentally, I'm yelling "Auuuuggghhhh, ENOUGH! Jesus, enough. We know he's smart. We know he gets it, and can do anything you put in front of him. He just doesn't give two shits about bar graphing how many chickens Farmer Brown has. And I don't either, so stop bugging us about it!!" But of course, we can't do that. We have to care about Farmer Brown and his freakin' chickens. Or at least, we have to make Mason think that we care, so that we can somehow make him care.

But I don't. Not about the minutiae of it all. I care a whole, whole lot about him actually learning the material. I want to know that he has a clear understanding of all the things they're trying to teach him. And I know that the teachers are trying to measure his learning and progress with all those stupid, boring worksheets. I get it. And because I get it, I ride his ass when he rushes through his work and makes sloppy mistakes. But I am so, so, so tired of riding it. Because if I can't muster up even a little bit of concern over the plight of Farmer Brown and his chickens, how can I expect him to?

And I'm just worn out with dealing with every infraction. He was dancing in class? Eh, yeah. He was talking in the hall? Meh. He was scaling the bathroom stall like Spiderman? Well, that's just kind of impressive....Before my teacher friends decide that they hate me, I know that it's all the little things that add up to a classroom full of chaos. I used to teach- I know you have to nip that crazy in the bud. But honestly, unless he's hurting someone, causing an outrageous distraction, or  selling drugs on the playground, I just can't get all that worked up about it. We're doling out consequences for it, but only because I can't figure out a way to ignore it without sending Mason the message that we don't care about his behavior at school. I mean we care, but come on- he's 8. And there's a certain amount of crazy that comes with being an 8 year old boy that no amount of lecturing or punishing is going to tame.

So I want a proxy to come and do all that crap for me. I want her to stand over Mason and make him go back and correct the mistakes in his homework 600 times. I want her to send out emails over and over to the teachers explaining that we are aware that Mason is not working up to his potential. I want her to go to the conference and explain that while we totally agree that Mason could be excelling, we can't force him to excel. And we are okay with him just meeting standards as long as he truly understands the material. I want her to lecture Mason 400 times about how he's so smart and capable, but his work isn't reflecting that. I want her to take away TV privileges because he danced in class, because I am tired of it.

I am tired of fighting with him and fussing at him. I'm tired of being mad at him, and I'm tired of him being mad at me. I just want to hang out, get along, and let someone else do the scut work. So, pretty please, tell me where to place that ad?