Monday, February 9, 2009

frustrated

You ever get frustrated and drop the “damn” or worse, “sh&%!”?? I do, I’m not too proud to admit this fault of mine. I have to be accountable when I do this, especially when it’s in front of my kids. I know this has it’s drawbacks because my 3yo heard me say “holy crap” when I slammed on brakes ONE TIME and ever since then he says “holy crat (he uses a T)” each time I tap my brakes if I’m having to do so in the city traffic. I’ll never live it down.

Which brings me to what happened today at school… Big E generally hops in the car and tells me all about his day. This particular day he says to me “so, in art class today we were working on our self-portriats and I was really working hard on mine… some of the kids weren’t listening to the teacher and he got really frustrated with them.” I said “how so?” and big E says “well, he said a bad word to the kids to make them listen”, I said, “hmm, which one, you have my permission to repeat it for this conversation only” and big E said “well, he said you kids aren’t listening to a damn thing I’m saying.” Then he went on about the rest of his day like it was no big deal…. But it was a big deal. One of my best friends is an elementary school teacher, another friend is a college teacher, and I even have a friend who teaches in highschool – all of which would tell me it can become very frustrating at times…. Even to the point of wanting to scream at the kids who just don’t show respect. But that doesn’t make it ok, and they’d be the first to say it.
I contacted the school, was put on the phone w/ the principle and I briefly told her that I was just a little surprised by what E told me…she said she’d have the teacher be in touch w/ me and she’d handle things on her end. I felt like a tattle tale, like a person ratting someone out… why? Because I did what I thought was right and in today’s world of ‘just leave well enough alone’ that’s not generally accepted! I told her I didn’t want a call from the teacher, but I did feel that my son deserved an apology, he deserved a grown up being a grown up and becoming accountable for their actions – because if it were MY kid who said damn in class… he’d have been put in ISS or suspended and held accountable. We’ll see where this goes…

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