I’m sorta like Old Mother Hubbard. I went to the liquor cupboard and it was bare.

This occurrence at the Shake-Shake is like an apocalypse on earth.

Especially when Payton brings home his writing journal from school.

Damn, I needed a drink.

Though Parker is now officially finished with this school year, Payton has 5 more days to go.

Would it be too much to ask that it end smoothly? Really? Am I asking too much out of life?

I’m not asking for carats of diamonds to rain from the sky. Just that I close out one damn school year with this boy without sprouting more gray hairs and uping my Irish cream/coffee mixture to a ratio of 2:1 in favor of the Irish Cream.

Yesterday I got another note home from school.

Sigh

She wrote that he had been having a rough few days. This I knew because he tells me how many check marks he gets each day. Payton is, again!, not completing his work during the day. She wrote, “Much (of his work) has not been completed lately. He says he is bored, but has not done his work.”

Double sigh

We have gone through this every quarter. At the end of each quarter, our wonderful (snark) system issues quarterly exams for each and every grade. Let me note this is a system wide thing and not necessarily something the individual schools want to do. I get the feeling the school doesn’t like it either, but legally they can’t say so. I’m only picking up on vibes and hints.

Isn’t that neat how the very people who should have more say so over how kids are taught are given gag orders?

Anyway, there are three days worth of exams four times a year, along with several days devoted to review for the test each time.

So each time these tests roll around, we see a decline in Payton’s work and classroom behavior. He stops completing work but it certainly isn’t because he can’t do it. I’ve seen at home how irritated he gets with me when I make him repeat tasks he has already mastered.

This pattern happens during other times too. At one point during the year they spent three weeks on one math concept. Payton mastered it the first week and scored 100 on the first test. He went on to perfect 100 scores on the following two weeks of tests, but during the second and third week his behavior slid and he was getting trouble more.

I’ve tried to diplomatically raise the question that perhaps through the language of behavior, he is saying something more and isn’t just misbehaving. I gently asked if he needed to be intellectually challenged instead of given so much review for material he has mastered. He truly does need less review time than the average student, if any at all.

It was back in December that I raised the question. It’s now May.

I don’t know what else to say other than boredom shouldn’t be measured by how much busy work is completed. We’re talking about intellectual boredom, not physical boredom.

And no trashing the teacher, please. I’ve come far in healing my anger and resentment. I’m still frustrated though and that is what this post is about.

That and I’m damn ready for this particular year to be over. Over!

What little hope I have left that a regular educational setting will work for him keeps getting washed away.

Along with this teacher note, I’ve seen writing work from Payton and he’s writing sentences of how much he hates school, how first grade has hurt him a lot. And that he still hates fiction. I laugh at the fiction thing, but it’s hard to read how miserable he is at school.

I’ve been told his current teacher is an expert on individualized education, yet I can’t get the school to even try to see if more challenging work during these times would be a solution. Many times I feel like they don’t care that Payton could be doing so much more and we’re missing a lot of his potential.

Or maybe I’m crazy and he isn’t all that smart. It’s hard to stay confident in the face of people with decades of experience. From my point of view, the writing on the wall seems pretty clear, but maybe I am insane because I’m the only one seeing it.

There are no alternative private schools except for one that is an hour away. As it stands right now, we can’t afford the tuition plus either the gas in driving there and back twice a day or a move across the bay to be closer to the city.

Though there is a rumor that Brangelina are looking to buy a home in this particular city. Apparently they visited during some art or film festival (you can tell how closely I follow my celebrity gossip) and might, or might not, be looking at homes. Just think, Angelina and I could be room moms together!

Or I could just home school Payton. God save me, I don’t know if I have it in me.

So I have another school question for my blogosphere peeps. It’s easy to be in your own little world and think everyone else does it this way too, and I find it helpful to gain the perspective of other people’s world.

Like with the PTA religion. Thanks to you I don’t feel like such a freak for thinking the two shouldn’t go together.

I need a larger perspective.

Yesterday Payton came home with another tale of two kids calling him a crybaby during PE. And he wasn’t crying. They were making fun of him for what happened the other week. They were mock crying, imitating Payton from the other day, and calling him cry baby.

Payton turned around and told them they were the cry babies for fake crying. I’m not thrilled that he in turn is name calling, but damn, I want the boy to stand up for himself too. He seemed to handle it and wasn’t overly upset by it, so I suppose that’s good.

But it still pissed me off.

I wonder what in the hell is going on at that school during PE.

Payton isn’t the only one having these experiences. I’ve heard from other first-grade parents that their kids come home with similar stories. Stories of kids being mean to others, getting hurt, playing too rough, name calling, etc.

I know PE is one of those times when stuff happens. Where the cruelty of kids comes out more because there is less supervision. But the frequency I hear of these things happening at Payton’s school seems out of proportion.

So you know what I did. Hello, this is ME.

I was THAT parent again. The high maintenance one.

I called the principal as soon as we got home, hoping to catch him before he left for the day.

One of the assistant principals called me back and I told her what happened and how it tied in with the previous week. I also told her I wanted to know what is happening on the playground because this seems to be happening too often.

She explained…

They have 9 first grade classes out at PE. Our school averages 18-20 kids per class.

There are four adults out there. Two PE teachers and two aides. That’s four adults to supervise approximately 175 first graders.

Gack!

She also explained it’s the time of year too.

What does the time of year have to do with turning kids into mean brats?

I asked if Payton was being singled out or was this a bigger problem? She immediately assured me this was not Payton being singled out.

I don’t know which is worse…the fact that she dismissed my concern without verifying it or that she’s so confident that what is really going on is a whole lot of kids being bullied and teased on the playground.

No damn wonder Payton doesn’t play with anyone at PE.

Then I wonder if I’m overreacting.

Is this how it is on school playgrounds nowadays and I’m remembering more idyllic days from my school years where I felt safe playing with the other first graders?

Is this student:teacher ratio at PE pretty common? (I tried last night to find the state guidelines, but haven’t yet.) That’s about 42 kids per adult.

Or is this a common problem at overcrowded schools…an out of control playground? Things happen more because there are more kids?

I want to be reasonable with this, taking into consideration there are some things kids will just have to deal with and handle in their life. My parents didn’t protect me from each and every taunt and teasing I had as a child. I had to handle some myself and that’s ok.

Yet something doesn’t feel right about this.

Yet again, am I being overprotective? Raising a kid that is different from the norm, I can see where I could have some overprotecting tendencies.

Opinions?

Did you think I would ever title a post with those words? Me? No, I never thought I’d write a title like that.

But there you go. Life makes you eat all sorts of words.

For two days in a row Payton has come home from school upset because kids are laughing at him.

Each time my heart breaks for my boy.

On the first day, Payton, with his eyes welling up with tears, told me how a big kid laughed at him over the boat he is going to build.

A few weeks ago we went to a local art show where Payton was very inspired by recycled art. Ever since that day he has been collecting all types of recyclable material for artwork.

One of Payton’s ideas is to craft a boat out of the aluminum tops from the Pringle snack packs in his lunch box. Each day he saves these tops, brings them home and adds to his collection.

And the big kid laughed at him for it.

Oh how my chest hurt when Payton told me this. To know someone stepped into my little boy’s wonderful creative energy and proceeded to stomp on it makes mama bear want to roar.

Payton and I talked about it. I let him get it all out and then gave him a hug. I told him one of the things I loved best about him is his creativity and how he thinks of things no one else would think of.

“Yeah, that kid doesn’t know what kind of scientist I am!” Payton said.

No, he definitely doesn’t know who he is laughing at, that’s for sure. In thirty years, we’ll see who’s laughing.

The next school day Payton comes home again with tales of several kids laughing at him during PE.

These particular kids laughed at my son and called him a girl because he was crying. My seven year old little boy was crying because the noise in the gym gave him a headache.

Mama Bear wants to roar. Loudly. For more than one reason.

First off, I’d like to give a few kids a piece of my mind. If Payton recognizes any of them in the hall, I think I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from saying something.

Second off, Mama Bear will have a little talk with the principal first thing this morning.

When Payton told his PE teacher the noise was making his head hurt, the teacher told him he would “be fine” and made him stay in the gym. Payton was made to stay despite the fact there is a medical excuse from his Ped regarding these noise-induced headaches during indoor PE. An excuse the school required us to obtain at the beginning of the year. They have it in his file.

Why was he not excused from PE when he told the teacher his head was hurting?

You can’t imagine the noise when every first grade student is in that tiny gym. A gym, by the way, originally built for a school of 400 students. The school has 1000 students now. That’s 150% overcrowded.

I can imagine it. I went up at the first of the year and experienced it myself. Loud doesn’t describe that gym.

Payton opened up again and told us even more over dinner last night.

After he told his PE teacher his head was hurting and he made him stay, Payton walked away and started crying. That’s when the other kids began to make fun of him. The ringleader began calling other kids over to join in the ridicule. The other PE teacher saw Payton crying and she told him to shush it.

Instead of finding out why he was crying, she told him to shush it.

Holy fucking shit, my head almost exploded over my steak dinner. Steam definitely came out of my ears, horns grew from my forehead, and laser beams shot from my eyes.

The principal will be hearing from me first thing this morning. First! Thing!

Payton says he wants everyone fired from the school.

I think that’s a seven year old’s way of saying….Hey! You kids are mean shit heads. And you teachers, you weren’t there for me either!

I can be the mama bear at school and roar over this to the right people. Screw the fear of being That Parent. My child is hurting both physically and emotionally. I’ll be That Parent.

But the rest of it.

This is all so hard for a parent.

What do you do? What type of healing do you give for these kinds of childhood wounds? The hurt of being laughed at and called names for crying.

How do I overcome that damn Boy Code?

What do I say?

This is so very hard on a mother’s heart.

Update: Just got back from the school. The principal assured me this would not happen again. He is going to take the necessary steps with the teachers this morning to make sure of it.

As you may know, my estranged in-laws are no longer estranged. They are still strange. That hasn’t changed. But they are back in our lives, at least for the time being.

Because who knows when the wind will change directions and I will again be the white trash with money daughter-in-law Satan put on this earth just to emasculate her son and disrespect the military. (Don’t ask me to explain crazy)

During one of our two visits so far, I ended up in the kitchen alone with Wally’s mom (ack!) and we were talking about the boys. They’ve missed four years of the boys’ lives so there was a lot to say. I told her a bit of what went on with Payton at the beginning of this school year and a quick summary of what happened at the Ambush Meeting. That’s when she said…

“I’ll tell you Heather, as a former educator and as a parent too, you have to handle teachers and principals with kid gloves or your child will have a reputation with the teachers.”

Oh hell.

I don’t think this really qualifies as wearing kid gloves, do you?

I think yelling at a school official pretty much means the gloves came off, no?

Oops.

I told my mother-in-law that few parents would have been able to sit through that meeting, hear the things I heard, and not lose their cool.

For the love of god, they were purposely withholding information on my child that I needed to know to help him! Not just withholding, but lying to me when I asked!

I had to remind myself that up to the point of raising my voice and banging my fist, I’ve stayed respectful in all of my dealings with the school. Considering I’m the sassy-mouthed, opinionated woman that I am, I should be quite proud at all of the things I’ve wanted to say to them but refrained from saying.

But still….

I wonder how much truth is in her statement?

Of course you attract more flies with honey than vinegar, and I certainly never went to the school to show my ass on purpose, regardless of Satan’s plan for my life.

But at what point is a parent justified in taking off the gloves and pitching an adult temper tantrum over the treatment of her child?

Generally speaking, do educators expect parents to defer to their expertise and opinion?

Do educators have a tendency to disregard a parent’s insight and think they know more than the parent?

Do they have the tendency to assume parents are in denial when it comes to atypical kids?

Do educators black-ball a child because a parent questions the school?

Or is my mother-in-law speaking from an outdated perspective?

I’m asking these questions in all honesty and without my usual snarky sarcasm.

I’m attempting to dance a fine line of advocating for my child while dishing out the honey. I’m not out to make enemies with anyone at the school, but neither will I bend my belief in my son.

It’s life on a knife’s edge….wheeeeee!

When you have more than one educator with over 20 years experience tell you they’ve never had a kid to do such-and-such and this-and-that like your kid does, you’re kinda winging the whole school environment as a parent.

So tell me….

Am I coming or going?

Wearing kid gloves or boxing gloves?

Or am I in a catch 22 and screwed when it comes to conventional education?

Sometimes I can’t help myself.

People in the blogosphere, I have failed.

Like my Fartner in Crime, I don’t care for the crap-filled goody bags from child parties. Call me the Ebenezer Scrooge of little people parties if you will, but that’s how it is.

I stopped giving them out a couple of kid birthdays ago. I figure when I drop $100 on an inflatable jumping house for 2 hours or pay for everyone’s entrance into the aquarium, that’s treat enough for the kiddos.

But the goody bags have an evil plan to thwart moms like me who have put our foot down at giving out plastic filled crap at parties.

They have invaded preschool class parties instead!!

And the invasion is spreading.

When Payton was in preschool two years ago, I only remember goody bags at the big parties, such as Christmas and end of the year/graduation party, and I really don’t have a problem with that. But now that Parker is in K4, the invasion has exploded!

Each and every holiday party we have (and we celebrate them ALL!) goody bags are on the list.

You would think since I’m co-room mom for Parker’s class, I would be able to at least stamp out the invasion in my classroom, right? Ha. ha.

When I expressed disinterest in doing goody bags for the first class party, I could tell the teacher wasn’t behind the idea of getting rid of them. So I didn’t insist in having it my way.

But when it came time for the Valentine’s Party, the other co-room mom and I ran into each other at the grocery store and stopped to chat and plan the V-Day party. We both confessed that we thought the goody bags were just too much, and since the kids were exchanging Valentines anyway, that should be enough.

Yesssss! Sweet victory!

Since she and I rotate who makes out the food list for the holiday parties, the Easter party fell to the other mom. She placed the sign up list on the board today and on the list were lines for people to sign up for goody bag items.

Damn! Foiled again!

Considering we are to send in a dozen treat-filled easter eggs for the egg hunt, you would think the contents of the plastic eggs would be goody enough. Apparently not.

I understand why the other room mom probably put them on the list. When every other classroom sign up sheet has it on their list, you feel like the School Scrooge when your class is the only one whose kids won’t be getting a bag full of crap.

But when is enough enough for these classroom holiday parties?

Why do parents of our generation insist on throwing crap at our kids at each and every holiday and party?

Is it really for the kids? From what I’ve seen, they are happy with the special treat of having pizza at school and licking icing off of cupcakes.

Why do we parents feel that’s not enough anymore?

On our way home from dinner last night, Payton and I had the following conversation…

“Mom, what are silly rules?”

“Well. I suppose they are rules that don’t make sense,” I answered.

“Rules like white people sit in the front of the bus and black people sit in the back?”

“Yes, that was a silly and unfair rule,” I told him.

Payton asked, “Who made it up?”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhh”

How do you answer that one? Fortunately, Payton moved on without requiring an answer.

“Mom, did you know black and white are antonyms?”

“Yeah, they are,” I answered.

“That means they are opposites. Black and white are opposites.”

“Yep, that is true.” I beginning to wonder where this is going with antonyms and race. I start to sweat a little because it’s hard to predict Payton’s train of thought.

Payton continues, “People aren’t black and white. We’re peach. They’re brown. Those aren’t opposites.”

Whoa.

Never before have I considered the antonym quality of black and white and its implication on race; how the colors black and white are considered opposites and whether that has any psychological affect when we use those words to describe people.

In February I have to register Parker for kindergarten. As I fill out the registration form for a public school, I’ll inevitably get to the section where I have to check a race.

This time though, I’m going to listen to the Way-Shower. Instead of checking white, I’m going to mark other and write in peach.

Dear lil’ chil’renz, I try not to give you more than one read a day. But this really, really, really won’t wait. We have a special guest today who wants to share something with you. The crazy lady from the pumpkin patch has a special Pumpkin Story for just you. Please sit back and do not listen to the crazy lunatic pumpkin lady.

Hello all of you little three and four year old children on a preschool field trip. Welcome to this large methodist church pumpkin patch, which is a money-making endeavor that we have open to the public. We accept the money you paid for this field trip and fully know you come from another church preschool of a different denomination. My name is Lunatic-Pumpkin-Lady and I’m going to be talking to you about gourds, Indian corn and pumpkins.

See this gourd. It’s a gourd.

See this corn. It’s Indian corn and you don’t really eat it. It’s for decoration.

See this pumpkin. See the inside of the pumpkin.

(walks around the entire lot of lil chil’renz to make sure they see the the inside of a pumpkin)

It looks yucky doesn’t it, boys and girls?

“Yes,” answer all of the little three and four year old boys and girls.

Well boys and girls, you are yucky on the inside too. You are yucky on the inside just like this pumpkin because of sin. When you do bad things, that’s sin. Now, who here has been mean to your brother or sister?

(all the lil’ chil’renz raise their hands because, hey, it’s what siblings do to each other. )

When you are mean to your brother or sister, that’s sin. When you are mean to your mom and dad, that’s sin too. So you are all yucky on the inside just like this pumpkin. You must come to Jesus and he’ll get rid of the yucky that’s in you.

Remember all you three and four year old children, you are yucky on the inside because of sin.

The End.

Oh, my sweet lil’ chil’renz. I don’t know what to say I’m so shocked. Except that you are whole and perfect and absolutely beautiful on the inside. You are still so tiny and know so little of ugliness. Please lil’ chil’renz, this lady is a lunatic and does not know what she is saying. Do not listen to her. Remember lil’ chil’renz….you are absolutely beautiful on the inside.
***********************************************************************

I shit you not, that actually happened today on Parker’s field trip. Having made this particular field trip trek before, I was in shock. Utter shock. I thought we went to the wrong church and ended up at a Southern Baptist tent revival concealed as a pumpkin patch.

Once the shock went away, in about 15.7 seconds, I felt the urge to make a scene. It took all I had not to pull my lil’ chilz up from that group during her lunatic ravings and march off.

It went against every grain of mother love I have to stand there while someone told my beautiful child that he was yucky on the inside. Because he fights with his brother like every other sibling in the world.

If I’m being all honest, I wanted to tell the Lunatic Pumpkin Lady where she could stick her story and it ain’t somewhere the sun shines.

But I didn’t do it. I didn’t make the scene.

Now I wish I had.

I wish I had made that public stand and said, without words, that I choose to believe my child is beautiful on the inside and I will not listen otherwise.

I didn’t do it. I caved to the arbitrary rules of polite behavior. And let my son sit there and listen to this crap.

I hang my head down in shame to call myself the Queen of Shake-Shake.

Instead, once she was finished with her lunatic talk, I pulled my sweet, beautiful Parker to the side and told him that he was NOT yucky on the inside, there was no such thing as sin and that woman was talking crazy talk that isn’t true.

“Do you understand mommy?”

Yes, mommy. That lady was just teasing,” he answered.

“You are beautiful, inside and out Parker!” I told him passionately.

“I know,” he answered.

P.S. I did call the church office and lodge a complaint. Who knows what good it did, but I had to let someone know my feelings on such an inappropriate story to little three and four year old children.

P.P.S. I realize religion can be a touchy, sometimes controversial subject. And I have just poo poo’d on sin. Please be sure to note my comment clarification post immediately below this one.

Take a child who has a passionate love of learning – a child who excels at learning, particularly in one subject and seems to absorb the information with no effort. But this child hates school with as much passion as he loves learning and has problems in school.

Why do we always assume the child is the root of the problem?

People do it almost every time.

I consider myself pretty free-thinking and am certainly known to question authority, and I don’t accept ideas as true because everyone else accepts them. But yet again, even I have to wade through the whole mentality of it always being the individual who is wrong.

The longer I raise Payton, the quicker I get at wading through old mentalities.

During our ambush meeting at school a few weeks ago, the psychometrist adamantly insisted that Payton was exhibiting atypical behavior and was convinced he needed therapy and testing.

Funny. They didn’t consider that perhaps the school administrators and staff needed some therapy to better recognize and understand gifted minds. Again, it’s always the child with the problem, not the adults or system.

I see commercials on TV now telling us how autism is on the rise. So is ADHD. Is there any “childhood disorder” that isn’t on the rise?

In 2002, 1.623 million kids were diagnosed with ADHD. In 2005, the number was 4.4 million.

4.4 million!

Am I the only one who thinks something isn’t right and it isn’t the kids?

I think most parents probably hear those kinds of numbers and go into somewhat of a panic, thinking……What is wrong with our kids? What’s causing this to happen more and more? Is it vaccines? Something in the water? Acid rain! Lead laden toys from China!

I venture to guess parents think that because I use to ask myself the same questions. But I don’t ask those questions any longer. Instead of asking what is wrong with our kids, I’m asking….

What is wrong with the system? How does it need to change?

Why is the system demanding more and more conformity? Or are they?

Has the system always been this way?

I think it has. As long as there has been compulsory education, (and probably before) each generation has griped over how schools are only about spitting out facts and not true learning.

Yet something is going on with our children.

Instead of a phenomenon of pathology in our children, what if it’s a phenomenon of creative minds being born and the schools are truly not equipped to deal with this influx of highly creative children. Schools have never been equipped for them, only we’re seeing more and more of these bright children being born.

I’ve said it before and I still believe it. More children are coming into this world with higher minds, not with more disorders.

But the current generation of adults doesn’t understand what it means to have a higher mind and we explain it in the only way we can relate – disease, dysfunction, disorder. As a society, that’s where we put our minds and our money. If you don’t think that’s true, then count the number of pharm ads you see in television and print each day. Pick up any parenting magazine and notice how many ads are in there for ADHD medication. Now try to find information readily available on gifted children.

Contrary to popular belief, gifted minds are not what we would consider normal kids, only much smarter. Think about it. When we hear little Johnny is gifted, what comes to mind?

Is it the media stories of a 15-year-old who embodies every positive human attribute, only they are so smart they are beginning their freshman year in college? They are just like everyone else, only much smarter. You know, Doogie Howser.

That seems to be the only type of giftedness in children our society talks about and accepts.

If you were to read the following characteristics, would you associate them with giftedness?

• reactions are over-the-top
• difficulty modulating behaviors
• low tolerance of frustration
• hyperactivity
• sensitivity to noise, touch and other sensations
• preoccupation with objects and/or ideas
• extreme interest in one area
• problems making friends
• intense tantrums, frequently beyond the toddler years
• unusual sleep patterns

I think it’s unlikely many would associate those traits with giftedness or a highly creative mind.

Why would they when those characteristics sound just like the characteristics of Aspergers? Some of them run parallel to ADHD too. And that’s all we hear about through the media.

I copied those traits out of the book A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children. Those are a some of the qualities the authors describe as very common in the gifted child. In fact, the more you see in quantity and degree, the more brilliant the mind.

However, our society is so quick to jump to the idea of pathology and children who exhibit those above characteristics are first assumed to have something wrong with them.

Are we diagnosing an entire generation of creative geniuses with disorders?

And we “therapy” out of them some of the very characteristics that make them creatively gifted.

What are we doing?

I can only guess that we continue to play the system’s mind game of the child having the problem? Perhaps because we feel powerless against the system.

Well, I’m not powerless.

And I refuse to play the game their way.

I’ve been holding the story of this ambush meeting I keep referring to. I didn’t know what to say about it or what point I would have with it. But now I realize there is a point to the story. We parents of these highly creative kids…we’re not powerless. And we don’t have to play their game. Through this tough time of first grade, I stood by my belief in my son. And it’s now changing the school’s belief in my child. That’s a story worth telling. And I’ll share more soon.