So today was annoying. There really isn’t any other way to describe it. This evening we had a 1 hour impromptu parent-teacher conference for my oldest due to behavior. This has NEVER happened. My 10 year old, though trying sometime, has never needed this level of intervention.
This morning I was in a vendor meeting when my phone rang with P’s school. I quietly excused myself and stepped into the hall. It was the Administrative Intern. The Administrative Intern is a fairly new role. He’s like the warden. If you get in trouble, you don’t see the principle, you go to the Administrative Intern.
In my sons’ schools you receive a color on a calendar located in their folder based on behavior. It is brought home every night, signed by the good parents and returned the next day. Behave like Mother Teresa, you get blue. Act like Bobby Knight, you get red with your recess revoked, detention and a call to your parents. Today my child was Bobby Knight.
Apparently, not only did my son’s color drop…twice, he attempted to hide it by coloring his box with pencil and not the required red. When his teacher called him out on this, he told her he would tell me. Lie 1 complete. There were a few other things I won’t bore you with that occurred. I will just tell you that overall he is fiercely competitive and takes all games and debates way overboard.
In addition to the Administrative Intern calling me, he called my husband. My husband does not do well with stressful situations such as these. In fact, I received a combined total of 31 texts from him within a 6 hour time span today regarding this issue. His job has a Work Optional Policy so he has time to do things like send me 31 texts.
At text #24, it was communicated there would be a conference tonight with P’s homeroom teacher and the Intern. Between now and then, my main goal was to ensure my husband would not go ballistic on P. I wanted to send P a text that read:
“Don’t go home, I’ll explain later. Go somewhere else but if you value your life, don’t go home.”
Don’t get me wrong, I was pissed and would be grounding him. My husband is a yeler and yelling at him for this offense, wasn’t going to fix things. I’ll save yelling for the really stupid things he’ll do in high school like get a tattoo and/or wreck the car.
In text #26 to #28 my husband explained to me that at first he yelled but then had a very meaningful conversation with him. Turns out his 2 good friends have been giving him the cold shoulder and it’s been hurting his feelings. Something about a fake mouse his friend loaned him but then P lost it and the kids got mad at him but then he found it so everything should be o.k.
Suddenly my frustration turned to a lump in my stomach having been bullied and/or ignored in elementary and middle school. I had visions of finding this kid, pinning him up against the wall and saying “Listen up you little shit, he didn’t mean to loose your stupid mouse and he found it. Going forward, you need to be nice or I’m really going to loose my shit. Got it?” Obviously this would never probably happen, it’s just my way of coping.
At 6:10 we dropped P’s little brother C off to his best friend’s house so he would not have to be part of the conference. I had a feeling C wanted to be part of the conference for he was milking every aspect of this whole ordeal; loving the fact his brother was in trouble. After dinner, we asked C to go upstairs for a few minutes so we could discuss this matter further with his big brother. He obliged quickly but once he hit the hallway, I could see out of the corner of my eye that he had turned back around so he was facing the table and walking backwards slowly so he could hear every juicy detail.
“Go!” I yelled at him. He turned back around and scurried away. I totally did the same thing growing up.
I’m working on My Son Acted Like Bobby Knight Part 2 now. I thought I would break it up so this doesn’t end up being a novel. 🙂
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