Do You Have the Wrong Number?!

"Hello, Mrs. Jones?"

"Yes?" (My heart starts to race #anxietymom)

"This is Mr. S, an admin from the school, and I have Mason here in the office. He's okay, but we have had an incident."

"Okayyyyy....." (spit it out already, pal, I'm on the edge of my seat here! I am planning out all of the different chores he is going to take off my plate in the next week. This could be fantastic!)

"He kicked another students lunchbox in the lunchroom. With his foot."

"And...?"

"That's what happened. And sometimes the worst punishment we can give is to call the parent."

🙄

Give me a break. You aren't serious right now. I just checked the calendar and it is not April 1st, so I can only deduct that it's pretty quiet in the school yard today and you needed something to do. I feel like a note home or a tally on the board would have been sufficient. You called me AT WORK to tell me that, after leaving a message on my cell phone (that I had not seen yet, relax judgy pants, I don't screen phone calls from the school).

Hear me out, teacher friends, I am the FIRST person to admit when my child has made a poor choice. I am the world's biggest people pleaser, and the thought of one of my kids throwing a wrench in the day with bad behavior makes my blood pressure rise. My kid can be an a-hole. I'm not naive to that. However, sometimes the sensitivity that is in school these days make me crazy. He did a jerk thing. You shouldn't kick a kid's lunchbox out of his hand. That's rude as hell. But to send a child to the principal's office over that seems a little over the top.

I can't lie. I played along and talked to Mason on the phone about it. I took away his iPod for a week (it's been dead for two, so it's not like I crushed his weekend plans or anything). But hindsight has me thinkin'. Maybe taking away the authority of teachers and admins in the school has created this tattle tale culture we now live in. I would have much rather my kid had to run laps on the playground for being an ass (and read about it in a note after school), than to have received a startling phone call in the middle of the day at work over it. People are so critical of school employees and how they handle situations that this is what it has come to. I feel like my teachers were allowed to teach us life lessons. Pretty sure we had a paddle. Luckily I was never sassy enough to get the paddle, but I think I saw it once while being nosy in the office. I wish I could say the same for our kids.

The lack of respect for authority is in the classroom, on the sports field, and with law enforcement, and if we don't get a handle on it, we are going to have a bunch of entitled, drug addicted, self-centered brats, waiting on their handouts after graduation. (<--- I realize that's very dramatic, but that's kinda what I do.) Take back the classroom, teach! Don't tattle... paddle!! Haha, just kidding... but a little more freedom to control the classroom would be most helpful in my opinion... and since I started this blog to give my opinion, then I guess it's serving its purpose.

I'll sign a petition. Change.org should jump on this one! I just signed one to save dogs in China yesterday. This seems way more relevant to my life. #bethechange

#thingstoworkon #youcalledmeforwhat #tattletale #drama #anxietymom