Level Two. Best Approach.
Level Two. Best Approach.
By Michelle Lloyd.
Handling differing situations was not always easy and New One had first hand experience of this kind of difficult task. His home life and school life, were to him, very different matters. New One liked to keep things on the straight and narrow, and so he aimed to do his best in both areas of life. It was the blending, keeping up to date and staying on top of his commitments to each of the separate but significant aspects of his life that made New One sometimes sweat.
On one occasion, it was just this kind of balancing act that caught New One up. It had not been the best day in terms of optimum achievement and far from wanting to disappoint anybody New One had felt the levels of confusion rise. Behaving oddly instead of his usual self, New One’s mum noticed that there was something amiss. New One though, chose to stick to his own plan of inaction. He stayed quiet, deep in thought and on getting home, went straight to his room.
Later that same evening, New One’s friend RV called around, but New One could not speak to him because he had feigned being sick to his mum. He had needed an excuse as for why he would not come out of his room and to be honest by that point, with all the worry about the unspoken truth, he had truly began to feel queasy. The mysterious illness that had kept New One from leaving his bedroom or more importantly looking at anyone continued to grow in size and awkwardness.
That evening in his desperate aim to avoid all contact with his parents and not give away anything New One missed out on his beloved snack time and he had to then give up on his TV time and that was a true sacrifice as it meant him not seeing an important episode of an athletic competition decider. On top of all that, he had to listen to Lana, his usually happy dog whining outside of his door. New One did not dare let Lana in for fear that she would indicate to anyone that he was not as ill as he had made out, but he had to say that it broke his heart in the process.
It was a little bit into the evening when New One finally cracked. He had been laying in bed feeling utterly miserable and when he heard Lana’s compassionate and companionable misery he could prolong it no longer. Out he went to let her in and that was when his mum, who had already told him that she would be checking in on him, caught him in the act. Both mum and dad cornered New One and asked for an explanation as for his strange behaviour.
In the end it all became apparent and New One’s latest test score at school was revealed. While neither mum nor dad were happy about his below average mark, they were keen to tell him that how he had dealt with it had not been correct either. Take the example of an important game of sports, dad explained, if the match did not go well the team could not go away and hide. They had to regroup and rethink about what had happened.
It made sense to New One and as he patted and consoled Lana, who would not leave his side, he promised to talk about things in the future. New One decided that actually what he had done by hiding a problem, had made matters worse. His family were there to listen, even when he felt that he had disappointed them and in any case, it was through talking to them that a lot could be achieved.