What to do?

I'm still finding it difficult to see the 'journey' of the memoir I'm trying to write ... except in the most condensed terms. Expressed in one sentence, I'm probably writing the story of how one Child of an Alcoholic married to a Teetotaler makes the journey from teetotaling through intermittent drinking to social drinking ... to over-indulgence, to addictive behavior, and back to teetotaling. But as soon as it gets more complicated than that, I tend to lose sight of the story arc and find the task of sorting what to leave in or out ... daunting.

I'm in about Chapter 6 now, and not yet out of childhood ... which probably means about 30% of what I've been writing will eventually be cut. Even though it's already been cut and tightened and shortened repeatedly. Which is fine ... at some point one must stop editing and just finish a first draft, even if it's huge.

Suddenly today, though, I find myself considering starting with a different memoir. Which would require me to start a different project. I think what's going on is that I want to use the "memoir" idea to spark and energize the "project."

It's a project I've been reluctant to take on. Every time I've thought about it I've thought it was too big, too hard, too overwhelming. Also I've been trying to be careful about boundary issues. Because, from my own childhood and my own days as a 24/7 parent, I long ago concluded that grandparents shouldn't meddle.

But. Some history.

I have a bright, witty, fun-loving grandkid who barely reads, several years below grade level. In young childhood the parents didn't read to their kid; sometimes they substituted audio books, thinking that was the same thing, but there was never any 'text in front of the eyes' in that process. Instead of having their children attend school, the parents (each of whom has complex and damaging histories in elementary schools) decided to home school. Except that neither of them had the persistence to stick to the program, neither had any experience of teaching, or even of academic success. Only one of them even read for pleasure at that time, though both do now.

Home schooling has been intermittent and often absent for months together during the 3 or 4 years it has been tried. The kids were taught to reply "we're home-schooled" whenever anyone asked what school they attended ... and later they were told to say "un-schooled." But both these answers have led a few well-meaning adults to quiz them, trying to establish (for the adult's curiosity) whether homeschooling is being successful. Some adults have spoken harshly to the kids or the parents about how poorly these kids' knowledge measures up. And in fact they know little, either in skills or facts, that they have not directly experienced in their household or the various locations where the family has lived. No geography, no social studies, no history, very little math (not even what's needed to make purchases) ... (*sigh*).

Nowadays, this grandchild and the younger sibling are both allowed to play on the computer at various kid-learning sites. For the past three years or so there have been increasing efforts to read to both kids and a little more focus on reading skills ... with the predictable result that the younger one is now reading better than the elder, having been exposed to reading at a younger and more developmentally appropriate age. Not that the younger one is necessarily reading at an age-appropriate grade level; just that the world accessible by reading seems to be open to that one, while the elder still struggles.

Which adds to the major self-esteem issues of the older kid, especially.

The kid is deeply aware of this deficiency, especially when meeting new people (adults or children) who confidently assume that anyone this height 'should' be able to read. The kid is greatly sensitized to the whole problem of reading and at present approaches any attempt to practice even known words with anxiety (at least, tantrums and meltdowns at worst).

Today we are halfway through a three-week visit together. There's plenty to do, and some of each day has been spent in organized learning, though not directly on reading. Yesterday the kid mentioned a wish to go back to the internet-homeschool site most recently used at home. So we did. With considerable support, the kid's performance was better than expected (by either of us, I think) ... but still far behind.

In between lessons the kid had a major meltdown, venting about dozens of things that are wrong at home and frustrating in daily life. Crying about missed opportunities, the problem of trying to be 'normal' when parents are irresponsible, the desire to go to school but not have to be in class with younger kids who would make fun of the kid.

I'm wondering if I could actually work on this consistently enough to make a difference, both in the next 10 days and a month from now when I get home (which means I'll actually be within an hour of their house for about three weeks a month until October). I'm wondering if there's anything I can do to be helpful with this. I'm wondering how to deal with the boundary issues that both parents have expressed when I've tried, on previous occasions, to help.

And just now I'm wondering if I can make the prospect of so much work more attractive to the kid by proposing that we write a book together about it. "The story of how ___ learned to read." "How I learned to read in a year" or something.

Just thinking about it, I find myself interested in writing such a book ... but not, so much, interested in the dailiness of the project of trying to get a kid into the right frame of mind to tackle a daunting academic task ... and work on it at faster-than-normal speed ... and meet an adventurous goal with it. And, of course, the dailiness of helping said child process all the anxiety and resentment and self-judgment and so on that will come up if we do this.

Am I crazy? Is this really something I want to take on? Do I have the least hope of success? What about all the travel I want to do? What about the various projects I already have in my life?