Pick on someone your own size!

It recently occurred to this once high-school misfit that teachers aren’t the big scary people that they once were. What an awesome revelation, and another step towards me becoming a grown-up.

I often get the impression that my boy is quite a challenge for teachers. You may have picked this up in previous posts. However he is a good soul and shows immense clarity of thought that often makes me think of him as being older than he actually is. He also doesn’t take much notice of boundaries. At least, he doesn’t take much notice of boundaries if they don’t make sense.

Our case in point happened when I was taken aside by an after school teacher and told in no uncertain terms that my child was not listening and doing as he was told.

Lady, this is nothing new… I thought to myself, and nodded politely while she said he was blatantly ignoring her.

‘OK, I’ll talk to him,’ I said and proceeded to go and tell him to get his coat and so on before going home. On the way I scolded him,

‘Now what on earth is up with you?’ I started in on him, ‘I really don’t want to hear about you being disrespectful….’

‘Hang on Mum,’ he interrupted. I hate being interrupted. Inside my head a war started…

Drop kick him! … No listen, it sounds like he has something important to say … NO! Just drop kick his interrupting rude self… Oh will you just listen, woman …

‘Mum I would like you to file a complaint please..’ Excuse me? That got my attention.

Well I won’t go into the details but he proceeded to tell me about how this woman (yes the one who was having issues with him) was insulting him and shouting at him and he could see no good reason to listen to her because her behavior was appalling. Now I am paraphrasing a bit obviously but this was the message and his tone was rather indignant. I was not impressed at all.

After speaking to the Hubby, and him offering to go sort it out (he does like a good butt kicking opportunity), I decided that I should be the one to deal with this.

So to round up the story, I went and told the teacher that unless her behavior dramatically improved, I could not be expected to tell my child to respect her as it would send the message that some people are exempt from basic good manners. I said that I expected her to set a good example. I was expecting an argument. What I got was ‘Of course, yes, certainly. I understand.’

‘Thanks, Mum,’ Lil Fella said, ‘Really, thanks for having my back.’

Any time little buddy.. any time.

The Lil law of attraction

Both my lads are still sound asleep and I have been up for 3 hours now. I’m tempted to take the hamsters out of their cages just to have some movement in the house. We have 2 of them. One we bought for Lil Fella for his birthday. He is the most loved pet in the world. Cute. He has been named Darwin. Cute. About a week later Lil Fella announced that Darwin needed a wife. Ah. No thanks dear, one is enough and I am so not paying out for another one just yet with the cage and the food, and the bedding and the ball and the not-to-mention where are you going to fit it and the potential for babies… Absolutely categorically no! Darwin is to be a hamster monk.

I was at work and my iPhone started belting out ‘I’m on Fiiiiire’. I forgot to put it on vibrate so my super funky ring tone was belting out for the office to bop along to. *blush*

“hello?”

“Hello, Mrs UK_Saffa?” my son’s head mistress said tentatively..

“Oh hello,” I said, keeping it light, while my heart sank.

I should explain that I get a fair number of calls from Lil Fella’s school. Lil Fella is a creative soul and also has a hazy view of where the line of authority is in school. From climbing on the roof, to just randomly walking out of class because he’s just had a flash of inspiration, it’s safe to say I am very familiar with the primary school staff. However there are 2 types of calls. There is the first kind which comes from any other member of staff usually to inform of some high jinx, such as my boy while swinging from the roof, had a tumble and is now missing a knee, or that he has systematically influenced every member of the class to stage a protest on the unjust amount of homework, or to tell me he has indeed shown a flash of brilliance and reinvented the jet pack, however he is now flying over the school field, and could I come tell him to get down. These are calls I like, they amuse me. I show just the right amount of serious before hanging up and laughing myself stupid.

Oh but then we have the call from the head mistress. I have had enough meetings with her to know that she is rather fond of Lil Fella but she is the pillar of strictness and he is not to know that! In any case, she indulges him his transgressions, and only gets involved when she can’t ignore it.

“I don’t mean to alarm you,” she starts (I am now alarmed), “Lil Fella is fine but it appears he has smuggled his hamster into school.” Oh, blast it. Really? I take it this is a bad thing?

“Ah,” I said, “Are you sure it’s his? I am pretty sure there was no hamster with us when we left the house this morning..” Ah, hell – did he smuggle it in his pocket? Am I really that dopey in the morning that I don’t realise that there is a living creature in his clothes… “…perhaps, it belongs to someone else?”

“Well you see, I think that it did belong to someone else and Lil Fella has somehow acquired ownership of it…”

As it turned out, there was a cleaner at the college down the road who was giving this thing away to a good home. Oh blast! Some flea invested, diseased rodent is now in the care of my 10 year old son. I made an arrangement to pick up the animal and impress upon my child the seriousness of taking pets to school (Actually to be honest I wanted to leave it there). So off I went to pick up the rat, and his newly acquired pet.

On arrival I decided to use this opportunity to see what Lil Fella would tell me of his own accord.

“Hi Mum,” he smiled gorgeously at me and came over to give me a hug. Angel. Sneaky Angel. “How was your day?” Ever so polite. Angel. Very Sneaky Angel.

“Hello boy,” I smiled back. “How was YOUR day? Did anything INTERESTING happen today?”

“Nah, not really,” This boy is gifted! Not a trace of guilt or anything on the face. Perfect execution of dialogue. Perfect flawless performance. I want to kick him! Let’s play this one out then.

“Oh really?” I say seemingly confused, “I had a call today from your head mistress…”

Sheepish Angel. “Oh yes, there was this one tiny thing…”

I went into indignant mother I-feel-a-lecture-coming-on mode “Lil Fella, what were you thinking and blah blah blah… don’t know where it’s been..you don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl… blah blah blah…and then you were actually going to try and HIDE IT FROM ME!!”

Chastised Angel. “I’m so sorry, but it needed a home, it didn’t have one. It was so sad and scared and I just wanted to make sure it was ok. I’m really REALLY sorry.”

Evil cold-hearted Mother..”Fine, but you don’t touch it! Not until we check it out. DO YOU GET ME!”

“Yes Mum. Thank you Mum. Sorry Mum.” I have melted. I am putty.

The next morning we went down to the pet shop, discovered it was a girl and Lil Fella happily declared her to be Darwin’s wife, I bought it the cage and the food, and the bedding and the ball… And Jemima now has a good home living happily in his room.

A true flash of brilliance!

Last night was the ever popular parent-teachers meeting. As is custom, we gave our Little Fella the chance to clue us in on any high jinks that may come up in conversation so we aren’t taken by surprise…

‘My Angel, NEVER, you’re deluded lady!’

Oh yes, learnt from experience on that one. Although Big Daddy’s common response on boyish mischief is usually to put his chin in his hand, look very stern and say,

‘Really? Of course. Uh huh – well I’m not surprised really…’ (mainly because he KNOWS where Little Fella gets his mischievous streak from).

So Little Fella thought for a bit and said there wasn’t really anything. In fairness though we’d had a very long conversation the night before about telling the truth and how important that is with family which has resulted in a slew of confessions…
“No, I didn’t really run around the class in a chicken suit, I was cleaning up because I was disruptive in class”
“No, I didn’t really look for my lost jumper, I went to play Football instead.”
“No, I didn’t really forget my homework, I just didn’t want to do it,”

Minor transgressions really, so I went to the school last night feeling quite positive.

Teachers were friendly. Good start. Teacher 1 started off the meeting:

T1 “Well, we wanted to start by showing you this!” she announced pushing a letter in front of us that had been written by Little Fella, “We are so proud of him, this was an excellent piece of work – a true flash of brilliance!”

Well I was about to stand up and say, “Thank you very much, that’ll do. It’s been lovely to meet you, bye now,” When T2 interjected…

T2 “So we know he’s capable of wonderful work, but he’s still very distracted and unfocused in class…”

Sorry, what? I didn’t catch that – did you say my son was brilliant? I’m sure that’s what you just said. Woo hoo, he’s a genius!
I realized at this point I was doing what seemed to be an awful lot of nodding… Focus woman…

T2 “… so what we mean to say is that we know he can do the work really well but he needs to concentrate in class…”

Yep a true genius – bored in class because he is just so good… I could hear Big Daddy interjecting a lot… phew, he’s got this one. Fantastic. Yep sounds all under control…. back in we go…

BD “… so ultimately this is nothing new, we know he can do it, he knows he can, he needs to be MADE to focus in class…”

So to conclude, on Big Daddy’s recommendation, Little Fella will now get a quiet area in the class where he can have a chance to have some quiet time to do his work. While the teachers initially thought it may be negative (like putting him in a corner), somehow the idea has such merit, they are going to try it out for a couple of other kids, make some special tables up and turn it into a positive area where kids – most importantly Little Fella of course – can get some peace to just get on with it.

We concluded the parent-teacher meeting with some lovely-to-meet-you’s and well-done-Little-Fella’s and with entire family in a good state of mind, we proceeded to get some congratulatory treats and chilled for the rest of the evening.

Now THAT’s the way to do it!