Regular readers of this blog may know I have a 10-year-old daughter named Boo, and that she is part sweet, loving, empathetic joy –  and part evil genius. I wouldn’t dare quantify these parts as the prospect scares me a little. Suffice it to say, she is not your average bear. What she is most certainly not, in any way, is a kiss-ass. She sometimes encounters them though, and the results are never in Boo’s favor. One such incident occurred yesterday with a girl I will just refer to as Nellie Olsen. I found out about the incident from Boo’s teacher in a phone call. In that phone call the teacher told me she has never experienced behavior like Boo’s (join the club). Here is the letter I wrote in response:

Dear School and Teacher people,
I  am writing about a conversation I had earlier with Ms.Teacher concerning an incident yesterday in class. I was told Boo had disiplinary action taken against her for an incident with another student, Nellie.

Ms. Teacher told me Boo was making an annoying noise with her water bottle and Nellie repeatedly asked her to stop. Boo did not stop. Next Nellie physically grabbed the water bottle from Boo. Boo then swung her arm and her lunchbox at Nellie. As I understand it, no contact was made.

There were several things that concerned me about this incident, the obvious one being Boo’s agression and her negative attitude as it was described to me by Ms.Teacher, but there was more.

I was told that Nellie “did everything right” in asking Boo to stop. I agree that using her words was a proper course of action for Nellie to take, but the fact that she said this several times, within her teacher’s earshot, is keeping with a trend in Nellie’s behavior to subtly instigate Boo while outwardly meeting all behavioral expectations. Word on the street is that she “likes getting Boo in trouble”. This does not surprise me as Boo’s response to provocation is usually dramatic and therefore she is a desirable target. I find that girls of this age who have high status with teachers provoke girls who have lower-status with teachers to elevate their own position with both the teachers and other students. I wonder if this may be the case here.

Ms. Teacher also told me she understood Nellie’s physical response of grabbing the bottle because she would have done the same. This may be true, but Ms.Teacher was the teacher in this situation, Nellie was not. There was no response to Nellie’s physical reaction, only to Boo’s. Ms. Teacher also told me she had 24 students to control so Nellie took it upon herself to take the water bottle away because Nellie understands her teacher was otherwise occupied. I am concerned about this subversive promotion of Nellie to assistant teacher and I fear that when high status kids are given this power it often serves to make others in the class feel less powerful. This can often lead to frustration, and in this case lashing out.
In no way am I justifying Boo’s egregious response and I am doing everything I can at home to keep her in a place of calm and reason, but I would very much like us to consider this problem from all perspectives.
Boo has exhibited an uncharacteristic slide in behavior and performance at school in the last few months and I have been asked several times if there is anything going on at home. The answer is no, not really. Her home is a loving one and she feels honored and powerful here. I wonder if she feels the same at school. She has shown signs of exhaustion and indifference in her school setting. I have taken her to her doctor to make sure there is no physical reason for this; there is not. Her signs of depression seem to be limited to school. So I would like to volley the question back and ask, is there something going on at school? Bullying? Social manipulation? Teasing? Favoritism?
Either way, I think we can agree that this is a child who is not having the best school life she can have and I would like to hear your thoughts on how we can change that. I would like to request a meeting of Boo’s teachers, guidance counselor, and any other support people who may be useful to help put together a plan for Boo’s success at school.
I would like to thank you all so much for all you do, and I look forward to working together to help Boo come through this difficult time and help her know she is valued,
– Penis Mom

(I like to confuse them a bit).

Here is the thing: I am now going on about 12 years of parent/teacher conferences where I hear things like “Well, he certainly marches to the beat of a different drummer, doesn’t he?” and “I have never met a young child like this one.” and “She is very opinionated, I don’t understand how she comes off quite so strong.” OK, I get it. I have unusual, strong-willed, pain in the ass little weirdos – but they are my weirdos and I don’t want to believe I am the only one who can appreciate them. I would love for school to be a place where their differences are honored – but I have yet to seen little evidence of that. Instead, I get a lot of judgment and accusation about how I can not control my kids. I usually don’t bother explaining that my main goal in parenting has never been to control my kids, because we are clearly on such different pages that the most I can hope for is a truce. My real concern here is that schools seem to think if a kid falls anywhere outside of a very narrow trajectory of normal and well behaved, parents are to blame.

What? Parents are to blame? Interesting. Interesting, and potentially very effective because parents will take that shit on like crazy. We take it on because we just know if we tried harder, were more consistent, got up earlier to make super food/kelp smoothies for them in the morning, ordered that My Baby Can Read crap when they were little, enrolled them in more classes, introduced them to different languages, and were just better role models, or stayed at home instead of working, then they would not be having these problems in school. Maybe that is all true – but maybe something else is true as well.

Maybe teachers and schools are only seeing value in a small percentage of students and everything else is seen in a negative light. A self-advocating child is seen as challenging or aggressive. Introspection is seen as withdrawn, imaginative thinking is seen as day dreaming, and leaders are bossy. I get it. If you have a classroom of 24 kids it is much easier to have them all be the rule abiding, straight line walking, homework crunching Nellie Olsens with blind allegiance to the teacher. But, when that doesn’t happen and kids behave in (gasp) unexpected ways, maybe it makes sense for the school to ask itself what they are doing to meet the needs of the student before calling parents to ask them how many ways they have fucked up today.

Schools don’t know what to do with kids like Boo. And by the time they reach middle school kids like Boo start hearing that message loud and clear. So what do you do when you are part of a system that doesn’t tolerate you, much less celebrate you? All too often our square little pegs just say screw it – Nellie can have school, it is made for her anyway.

And what do parents do when they get calls from school saying that their kid is “in trouble” and “has problems”? All too often, they believe them and begin a spiral of frustration and guilt. This doesn’t work for anyone.

Maybe it is time for teachers, schools, all of us really – to start making more flexible holes for our little square pegs. More than that, start honoring all kinds of pegs -what the hell, why not?

Ironically, my next daughter will start school next year and she is shaping up to be quite the teacher’s pet herself.

I honestly don’t know how to handle it. [Editor’s note: I got this one]

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