Hey Mom, You're Fired!

So tell me , is it normal to wake up one morning and find that you, a dedicated Mom, have lost your job?

Apparently it is. According to the local public school and every other mother I have met in these last few years , I am no longer needed. My daughter and all of her 11 years of wisdom, still thinks I should be on the job, She would like me to go to battle with everyone and over everything that is wrong in her life. Which at this age is everything!

I must say I am confused. No type or amount of education has prepared me for this. I feel like putting on a suit of armor, riding into the school and saying “This is my job, not yours! She is my child! Give her back!”

Well isn’t she…my child? I remember giving birth to her vividly and I can anticipate her moods, wants and needs. I always know when a storm is coming and her eyes communicate volumes to me, from illness to “OMG!”

Why doesn’t that count for something anymore?

The school tells me when I should send her and it gives me permission under certain circumstances to keep her home. God forbid, I let her sleep in once and a while or take her to the first showing of our favorite movie sequel. Even community service activities are considered ”illegal” absences. I get a note home every year, scolding me for my lenient parental choices. My daughter had 9 attendance issues this school year. Only 3 of which were “legal” and 6 of them for being tardy. The notes describe how important it is for my daughter to attend school and reminds me that I am teaching her habits that she will take into adult hood…Please!

Participation in her community, the arts and spending time with her family is more important in “life” than the repetition of the same skills she has learned since the first day of Kindergarten. Let us not mention, that I taught her to walk, talk, eat well, play, read, add and subtract without the use of “manipulatives”, prior to her entry into the educational system.                                   I guess the behaviors and language she learns, repetitively, on the bus is better for her. Talk about life skills! Even when I send her with a “get out of jail, Free” note, she can’t call me to come home when she is not feeling well.

Do not get me wrong, I do encourage good, strong work habits, commitments and consequences for your actions etc. My husband and I run a tight ship. My daughter is a great student and does well , even excells in all academic and social areas. There has never been a complaint or question from any of her teachers.  Between you and I, I  am often fearful of the teenage years because she has made it through elementary school with such ease.

Sometimes though, the lessons we learn as children are found through play and leisure activities. Knowing when your body is telling you to slow down or when the stress is too much is important. As adults we neglect those signs and are all to often paying the price, many times in urgent care or the emergency room. If we are lucky we get a second chance, but how many of us still neglect to take some well earned and much needed time off from the every day stress of our life? We learn these skills in childhood.

As children, my generation played outside all the time. School was work and it came with the usual academic and social mores, but after school we were free! Free to walk anywhere, do anything, and play with just about anyone, at just about anything.

Our imaginations and our bodies were used to exhaustion. Bedtimes at seven or eight thirty were not so much a rule, as it was our body’s natural time to crash. Playing was hard work. I was good at it too. Sure there was always that group of kids that bullied or got in trouble, the ones that were snobs and the ones that your Mom said to stay away from, but when we left the house, we were on our own. We looked both ways before crossing the street (except for that time we played chicken with the cars on our street and my neighbor dragged us home by our ears). We shared… we shared ourselves and our imaginations. We might have had a ball , a jump rope or some chalk for the sidewalk, a hockey stick or some roller skates, but really if we didn’t have enough for every one, we just played something else.

We played Army and pretended to shoot each other as we dove into the neighbors hedges. It was pretend and we all knew it. Nothing mean or dangerous about it at all. All of our Dad’s had guns of some type or another and many of us had BB guns laying somewhere around the house, but we never touched them when our parents weren’t around. I am not sure which we were afraid of most, the spanking we would have gotten or the look our mothers gave us after a neighbor snitched on us. It was innocent and usually safe.

My daughter cannot play in my neighbors yard. Fencing in our yard is not “aesthetically pleasing” and frowned upon by the town. The dog, a child’s best friend and babysitter , can’t run free with the kids on the street. My daughter cannot mow the lawn or rake the leaves until she is 16…no candy money (she is told at school it will make her fat anyway)… and she cannot go into a store unaccompanied, without being accused of stealing or being eyed by the cashier and made to feel uncomfortable. She takes a bus to school along with her peers, because God forbid they bundled up and walked that extra block. What will be the incentive for her to get her drivers license?My daughter can’t go to a friends house, knock on the door and ask if they can come out and play? We have to have an arranged play date…with one friend. Forget that game of kickball, one friend isn’t going to do it. We had back yards and block parties , these kids have to have structured parties with an invite list. I don’t ever remember my friends giving me a twenty dollar bill in my birthday cards. 

My daughter knows that I cannot save her. She is lost and I have been fired. It doesn’t matter to the school that I won’t let her drink soda or less than 100 % juice.That she is lactose sensitive and should be offered a different type of milk at lunch. That she has arthritis and is pain all day making the usual things difficult. Accommodations would be unfair. The children are all the same and should be treated the same (not equally, exactly the same). No exceptions , unless you have a doctors note and want to be labeled different, giving the school more control over the way your child learns. Attack of the clones!

The school does not care ,that I am her mother and it is my job to discipline her and my job to tell her what is right and wrong. It is my job to guide her education and her health. If she needs therapy, I will send her to a qualified professional of my choosing, not theirs. If I let her wear a hat to school she should be able to wear it. If I send her to school with a phone she should be able to use it (within reason). If her work is not done they need to call me. If the teachers see a change in her behavior,  they need to address me. If she is going to change a level in reading or math they need to tell me. I should know before the report card comes home, that there is a problem. It is my job. Let me do it!

I know they laugh at me. I have been told to “let go” and let “my taxes” work for me. She will be fine, “the schools have been raising kids longer than I have“. The recently divorced, mother of 4, who is barely making ends meat on her teacher’s salary and stressed out of her mind, is more qualified to raise my daughter than I am? The same woman who has been forced to incorporate character, health and diversity curriculum's into her already over stuffed primary academic lesson plans, will be better at identifying my child’s individual needs? The same person who has just been told the school has become completely “inclusive” and that the school budget did not pass, so she will have an extra 6 students in her already large class. The same woman who comes to school a half an hour early to prepare for the student’s arrival and leaves two and a half hours after their departure to wrap up her day. I don't agree and my quetsion is, who is raising her children, if she is trying to raise mine?　

I could go on and in detail, but it is no use, the fact remains…..I have been fired!