How Did it Come to This?

I'm writing this post over a period of time because it is an emotional subject for me. Right now it's less than a week before we see C off to boarding school, and I haven't slept more than 4 hours in the last 3 nights (that's 4 hours total, btw). I know this is the right decision. It's one that I spent many sleepless nights over, hashing it out with the Husband and parents. Discussing options with C, and determining the best course she sees for herself. C herself is over the moon with the idea of freedom and adventure. I know she loves us and will miss us greatly, but she is also excited for this amazing new chapter in her life. And I am so, so sad.

It all started just around the time N was born (because what you really need after giving birth is more emotional trauma). Okay, really it started years and years ago because C has never been what one would call a stellar student. That's not to say that she's not an incredibly brilliant and savvy kid because she is amazingly gifted. She's just not motivated. And I tried everything. Lord knows, I tried just about every technique under the sun. I collected bookshelves full of parenting how-to's, executive skills management, organizational skills. We tried the stick approach, the carrot approach, therapy (individual and family), charts and boards galore. There were more family meetings than you can shake a stick at, etc. etc. Nothing, absolutely nothing, worked. C is nothing if she is not stubborn. She had no use for homework (or schoolwork for that matter), and damn it if anyone or anything was going to make her do otherwise. It didn't help that she consistently tested in the 98th percentile on her standardized tests. Or that her schools (public and private) insisted on passing her on to the next grade in spite of her failing grades because she was just too damn smart to be kept behind. So there really weren't ever any meaningful consequences to her refusal to do any work. Our threats and warnings about not being able to keep up or get into a good school in Hong Kong went unheeded.

And so we came back the US for maternity leave, and I got an email from the CLO in Hong Kong asking if we had applied for the kids' school admissions yet. Mind you we aren't supposed to arrive at post until midway through the next school year, so, no, I hadn't even thought about it yet. The CLO suggested I might want to get my ass in gear (in a much more polite manner) because school admissions are like the lottery in Hong Kong, and you want to apply to as many as possible to ensure that your child gets accepted to at least one. This did not bode well for us. Not only do I have a special needs child to worry about (one whom the Consulate-associated school had already turned down flat), but now I had to worry about C, too. How on earth was she going to get accepted to these highly competitive schools with failing grades. Well, the answer became very clear, very quick. She wasn't. Hong Kong is no Manila - the Consulate just does not have the clout that the Embassy did in the Philippines. No one gives a crap who you work for. Money talks. The school situation in Hong Kong is so crazy that debentures are sold to companies for astronomical prices so that they can include school admissions as part of their expat packages for potential executive hires.

The more we learned about how dire the situation was, the more desperate we became, and the harder we got on C. Yelling, crying, begging. These were not uncommon tactics in the Pu household for much of the winter and into the spring. It made it even worse. My lovely, sweet, and semi-passive aggressive daughter's grades sunk even lower. At one point she only had a passing grade in one class. One. By the time I returned to the US in May, I was called into C's counseling office because she was on track to fail the 9th grade and they wanted to discuss summer school options.

At this point we had to make a difficult decision. Clearly my parenting skills were maxed out here. I had tried everything I could think of with absolutely zero results. A friend who had attended boarding school himself suggested to Husband that it might not be a bad option. C is lovely, well spoken, and well mannered child. She is smart, responsible in some ways (an excellent babysitter), and mature beyond her years. Who just won't do her goddamn homework. I had given some schools a cursory glance back in February when we first got notice that she might not be able to get into a school in Hong Kong, but now I began to look at them more seriously.

To be continued...


*The State Department recognizes that Posts may not have adequate school options available for a wide variety of reasons (danger at a Post, inadequate international schools, no American curriculum, etc.), so they offer 1 different allowances. The At-Post allowance is the maximum amount you can spend on an international school tuition at Post, the Away-From_Post allowance is the maximum amount that can be spent on tuition/room/board/books at a school of your choice that is not at Post.