Injustice

For the first time ever I saw one of my children suffer an injustice at the hands of an adult. I see it kid-to-kid almost daily and though it is hard I can handle it and most of the time so can Charlie. But an adult being harsh, unkind, and unfair? That's a different story.

It started last week when Charlie told me about his school day over lunch. He got his "clip moved" which means he got in trouble (not by his teacher who is FANTASTIC but by a note to his teacher). He told me the story and it sounded unfair but I thought maybe since he's only five I wasn't getting the whole picture or I wasn't understanding it right. I shared the story with Chad and we decided if it didn't come up again we'd let it go.

This week, not only did it happen again, it happened to the extreme. It led to serious embarrassment to Charlie, a visit to the secretary, and a tearful phone call home. Needless to say I was upset. However, in my emotional pregnant state I knew better than to march into the school and unload on someone. I walked in calmly, greeted the secretary politely,m and thanked her for her discretion. I then proceeded to quietly sneak Charlie out to the van without his classmates seeing. And then I called Chad- and HE marched into the school.

First off, Charlie's school is wonderful. I love, love, love his teacher and her aide. Love the principal, love the secretary, love the librarian...but every now and then a school will have a staff member who doesn't like kids. Especially little ones. Secondly, my husband rocks. He followed the chain of command, spoke with confidence and *AHEM* made sure the offending staff member would be doing no more offending.

A couple of days later we had parent teacher conferences and can I say again how much I love Charlie's teacher? She brought up the incident (there had been a substitute teacher that day) and let us know she was behind us. It was awesome. It's so comforting when a non-relative truly knows and loves the heart of your child.

The big struggle here was deciding when to let Charlie deal with the hard stuff of life and when to stand up and defend. This isn't to say he doesn't misbehave- he does and we deal with it. There was no misbehaving involved here- only pure meanness from an adult. I had high hopes of staying under the radar during the school years. I didn't want to be the parent that made teachers groan when they saw me coming. But when an adult acts like a child and intentionally hurts the pride of one of my kids? My reputation doesn't matter much after that. Letting Charlie know we will protect him matters more.