How to stop my brother from crying...

BCMan2013
Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:22:38 +0000

Alright, there are some things that need clarification here.

It is not my parents who are the problem. My parents are treating my brother with a lot more attention than they treated me. They walk/drive him to the bus-stop, got in touch with the teacher, bought him instruments, take him to concerts, take him out, etc. Although they do put a high emphasis on grades for me, they don’t push him nearly as hard (and they shouldn’t). They just want him to give his best effort (without spending too much time on it), and if he makes a mistake, he should learn from it and move on.

My brother is very “involved” for someone his age (oh how I hate that word). Aside from math, he does band and a few other activities. We also make him exercise/ride bike/etc. for 30 minutes each day before he starts homework (we don’t have the money to let him join sports).

My brother was always a stereotypical “intellectual”. He cries after watching a sad (or happy) movie. He spends time doing logic puzzles and finding them online. He speaks with the vocabulary and eloquence of someone twice his age. As for math, it runs in the family.

He chose to take the course after passing the SCAT, not me, not my parents, not the school. The school was willing to provide for it (there was really no other options; we didn’t have the money to pay for it, math team was not available at his school, putting a fifth grader with high-schoolers is not a good environment, and he cakewalked everything up until now, where he’s actually learning new material). Again, he’s an intellectual; he likes learning. He’s only crying about grades. Like I said, he’s doing well in it, and he’s close to completion, so we’re going to let him finish the course (with more supervision and moral support). He’ll cry if we don’t let him finish. As a deal, he promises not to cry until the end of the course.

It would be a waste to let him lose this knowledge. The best solution would be to let him join the math team, where he’s going to be taught how to use his previous knowledge differently and make a good group of like-minded friends, but not under the constraints of grades or the pressure of being perfect. I know in math team, I formed a great group of friends (who were way too smart for their own good :)). There was no pressure to do well (I didn’t do that well, anyways), and most of our mistakes were treated like jokes. When he’s matured emotionally, we’ll let him take calculus at our high school (if he wants to).

And don’t feel bad for me about what happened when I got rejected. Like I said, I’m grounded and down-to-earth. I’ve handled worse.

P.S. Good news. He’s not been crying for three days now.