My twelve year old son was working on a book report for his Language Arts class and I could tell that he was getting very frustrated. You see, he has always been very smart and has always been a perfectionist and I think for the first time in his life, he was having problems understanding the book he was writing on.

He asked me if I would please help him with it and this surprised me because he never ever wanted help with his homework before this point. I told him I would and asked him what the book was about. He told me it was about a family that was going whaling, but that there was a lot more to it than that.

I decided that I would read the book myself that night, so I could try to help him understand it. When I was talking to him about it the next day, I was sure he had a pretty good grasp as to what it was all about. He wrote the report, with very little help from his mother, and he did very well on it.