tovar_friedman

Tovar has been watching Transformers video reviews with great interest for a couple of years. He's been practicing hard to prepare for creating his own review. Here is Tovar's video review debut!

Tovar wants to let y'all know that he has moved to Berkeley with me, and was lucky enough to get into the Berkeley Arts Magnet school, where he started this week. He loves it there.

Tovar spends a lot of time drawing, and has been getting increasingly - and impressively, to me - sophisticated, so I'm excited to have him at a school where his talents will be nurtured.

I'd heard people talk about being inspired by their kids before, and didn't really believe it as I hadn't had the experience. But last night, Tovar inspired me.

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And I was impressed and inspired. Our son can be whiny and demanding and blameful - and he can be amazingly self-regulating, aware, and in charge. By interacting with him with love and partnership (in management terms, setting the stage for a great 1:1), I learned about his nightly routine, that he needed more clarity about his ownership of that routine & our acceptance, had him request & advise me (unasked) on how to reduce his Transformers obsession, and then he took charge of getting Izzy the last way to sleep. He's got it together as much as any of us - if we interact with him in an empowering way.

Two interactions today:

(Presumably he got this from our use of IFS).


Excellent non-judgmentalism!

Right now we're debating between:

PACT
Challenger
Stratford

So far we've visited PACT and Challenger.

Challenger has amazing academics, and PACT is very relaxed and colorful. Stratford is somewhere in between leaning more toward Challenger.

What do you think about academic focus v.s. very liberal "whole child" focus?

Tovar: What happened to Spunky (grandma's old dog) after he died?
Mama: They buried his body in the ground.
Tovar: In a coffin?
Mama: I don't think they put dogs in coffins.
Tovar: Grandpa Bill is in a coffin. And Grandpa Milton and Grandma Rose.
Tovar: Luther Martin King is also in a coffin.
Tovar: Einstein is also in a coffin. But he has toys in his coffin!

"I made this puppet with a gun that shoots glue!!"

"In Candy Land, the Transformers come eat the candy!"

"I like being sick because then I get cough syrup!"

There's a really cool magnet school in our district that is a lot nicer than the public schools. I submitted Tovar's application today nice and early to make sure that everything was in order. However, the applications are chosen by lottery, so my getting the paperwork in early won't actually help Tovar's chances. Our application was successfully submitted, and now we just have to wait until March when the results are in.

I'm really hoping he gets into the magnet school, its like a charter school supported with district money! I really like their approach based on what they said at the parent information night. If he doesn't get into it, our local school is supposed to score in the top 25% in the district, so that's not a terrible fallback.