Forgotten
06 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
If you follow me on twitter, yesterday you saw a barrage of negativity. And yeah, sorry about that. I try not to do that, but yesterday kind of kicked my ass. And I was going to tweet something positive since I was Debbie Downer all day, but upon further reflection I decided this warranted a whole entire blog post. And since I rarely have the time + inclination to write here anymore, I thought I would take advantage of my kids fighting playing outside to write a few things down for posterity.
I’m not sure I’ve ever talked about this here before, but at the end of Arwyn’s kindergarten year we had a bit of a problem. With another student. Let me pre-face that whole sinister story with this: Before she started kindy, I’d heard that the school she was supposed to go to was a little “rough”, but I chalked it up to over-protective parents who weren’t willing to give it a chance. And while it wasn’t the school of my dreams, it wasn’t that bad for the most part. Her teacher, while young and inexperienced, was very sweet and kind to the children and Arwyn adored her. I communicated with her weekly, if not daily, and she took all of my “my baby is going to school!” freaking out in stride. Parental involvement of any sort was low in pretty much all aspects of the school, but we soldiered on and had a decent year. Looking back now, of course there were a few red flags, but nothing that I felt overly uncomfortable with at the time.
There was a boy in her class who was a “trouble maker”, for lack of a better term. I’d observed his behavior first-hand plenty of times on field trips and while having lunch with Arwyn. I would find out later that the teacher was frustrated with the school administration’s lack of support when it came to reigning in his behavioral problems. I did not know much about his situation or home life, I’d only met his parents briefly during a school program. He “liked” Arwyn, and did the things young boys do to show their feelings: he made fun of her, he picked on her, he teased her. This had gone all the whole school year, but none of it seemed serious enough to warrant complaining to the teacher. I didn’t want to be one of those parents. The ones who think their child does no wrong. The ones who complain to the teacher at every little thing. The ones everyone rolls their eyes at, you know the ones. So I said nothing. After all, it was just kids being kids. My sweet little buttercup was going to have to learn how to toughen up a bit.
Or so I thought, until about a month before school was out. Arwyn, Bubby and I were on a trip to the grocery, peacefully riding along in the van when she suddenly blurted out from the backseat that TroubleMaker had stuck his hand down her pants during story time and then asked her to do the same to him in return, to which she politely responded “No, thank you.” Incredulous, I asked her if she’d told the teacher. No, because there was a substitute that day. I then had a tearful conversation on the phone with her sick teacher at home, in the soup aisle of the grocery. Her teacher was rightfully upset, and when I warned her that I would be calling the principal in the morning, she encouraged me to do so.
I then spent the rest of the evening alternately praising Arwyn for being forth-coming with this troublesome news and talking to me about it, trying not to cry in front of her, having long conversations about proper and improper touching, and promising her that he would get in some sort of “trouble” for his actions because I couldn’t imagine that he wouldn’t. When I told her that he would probably get in trouble and that it was ok because he did a bad thing to her, she seemed relieved.
The following morning I phoned the principal’s office before school started. I was put through to her voice mail and left a brief message outlining the reason for my call and asking her to call me back. I then anxiously went to work and checked my phone every 1.7 seconds for the rest of the day, to no avail. She did not return my call. At the end of the school day, Bubby and I decided to go to school and request to see the principal in person. Surely the lack of return phone call had been an unfortunate oversight.
After stating our request to the school secretary, we were ushered into the principal’s office, where we nervously waited for her to finish her end of school day duties and speak with us. She apologized for the incident, she assured as that the boy was in therapy and would serve a 1 day suspension as his punishment. I asked her what could be done about the remainder of the school year, not wanting my daughter to be forced into proximity with the boy for the next month. I was told that they would be put in different classes the following school year. That’s super, but that’s not what I asked. I asked what could be done now. I was told that school staff would be alerted of the situation and would keep the children separated as much as possible. We reluctantly left the meeting with the principal’s apologies and assurances ringing in our ears.
Two days later Arwyn came home from school, complaining about something TroubleMaker had said to her during lunch. I didn’t understand at first. How was he talking to her during lunch? They were supposed to be separated. But they weren’t. He was sitting right next to her. I sent an email to the teacher and the principal, stating that my expectations were not being met. I was told he would be kept away from her as much as possible. Sitting right next to her at lunch was not “as much as possible” in my book. The teacher responded, stating that she wasn’t with them in the cafeteria at lunch (this was true, although they did line up for lunch in the classroom). Again, no response from the principal.
Over the next few days I had several conversations, online and in person, with the teacher. I found out that the boy’s behavior at school had been a progressively worsening problem throughout the school year. He’d been banned from riding the school bus. He’d been suspended. She felt that support on the part of the school administration was lacking. She was doing everything she knew to do with him and it wasn’t working. She was asking them to help her and they were, in fact, doing very little.
It made me sick to my stomach every single morning to send my baby back to that school. I could not wait for the school year to end. I started researching our options. We found a school that was just as close that I very much wanted my daughter to attend. I contacted the new school and the difference in the immediate help I received was astounding. The new principal called me back himself within minutes, and was helpful and polite. I was told I had to go to her current school to fill out a form in order to transfer. When I went to fill out the transfer form, the old principal touchily asked me if it was because of “the incident”. I truthfully answered her, yes, that was definitely part of the reason. I left the transfer form as vague as possible, hoping I wouldn’t have to explain in detail exactly why we were requesting the transfer.
We spent an anxious summer, waiting to hear back from the school corporation. We had no guarantees that she would be transferred. I didn’t know where else she would go, but I knew she wasn’t going back to that school. Two weeks before school started, we finally got the news we’d been waiting for. Her transfer was approved.
Maybe I should have filed a formal complaint. Maybe I should have put up more of a fuss, but I didn’t want our previous experience to follow us to her new school. I just wanted to put it all behind us. I didn’t want to ever think about it again (not likely). I wanted it to be over. I spoke with a therapist friend of ours and she thought we had handled the situation well.
Last weekend, on a quick trip to the grocery with the girls we saw the boy and his dad. The boy immediately came up to Arwyn and said hi, calling her by name. She looked at him like she had no idea who he was. He walked away and she asked me who he was. I explained that he went to her old school. She said, “Oh, kindergarten? I don’t remember him.” I couldn’t have been happier to hear it.
