Pippi is still hobbling and Aidan tells me, "Mom, now I know why when someone wants to threaten a mother, they threaten to kill her child". That boy loves his chicken. And this was the point when I realized that any ideas I had about living on a working farm where you actually have to *gasp* kill your animals would never actually work. And I have to admit that the thought of putting that sweet little chicken in the stew pot makes me a little sick as well. So I guess the idea of raising rabbits for Rabbit Fricassee and gloves is tossed out the window as well. The young lady at the vet's office muffled her giggle rather well when I called to ask if they saw chickens. I had to explain that it was my son's chicken, and he loves her, therefore I have to do whatever I have to do.
We met with the principal the other day. It was completely draining in a way, as we spent and hour and a half talking about feelings-my feelings, Aidan's feelings, Chris' feelings, the teacher's feelings, and her feelings about all of our feelings. She made a rather poignant comment, though, when she said that our children complain to us because they know that next to our knowing that they are breathing, they know that we want them to be happy and when they are not-it gets our attention. It's true in a way. I mean, I want a lot of things for my kids, but what I mostly want to know is that they are okay and they are happy. It was interesting to me how when we started talking about the situation, the layers and layers that appeared and how we were only one cog in the big picture. Aidan's principal was very fierce on his behalf. In fact, I walked out hoping that I never got on her bad side. And man, oh man, she was unhappy that this bullying had been going on in her building. I was actually surprised at how seriously she treated it. She promised that this would stop, the girls involved would be seriously punished, and then provided a multi layered plan to protect Aidan from further harassment, and provide him with the tools he needs to understand how to counter when this occurs in the future. Because part of the problem was that my sweet boy just shouldered it all, and tried to ignore them until the burden became a bit more than he could bear. And his non response fed their need for power. He would have had no problems if it was boys doing the bullying...but he has been raised to treat girls with respect. She gave Aidan a list of 3 adults in his school that were his people even-telling him that if he needed to get up and leave class without permission to come talk to her, that was totally fine, and creating a secret code between his teacher and him that communicated if someone was being ugly so the teacher could come down on them without it being apparent that "Aidan told". Basically, she wanted Aidan to feel safe, and sort of powerful-like he could do something about it, and rebuild his trust with the authorities that if he ever said anything, it would be taken so seriously. In fact, she alerted everyone in the school that if Aidan ever said something, it had to be high priority because he was saying stuff and his teacher was not doing anything about it.
I'm happy with the way it went, and hopeful that things will be resolved. But also, that Aidan will come out of this having learned something and grown stronger. And that his story will become better because he faced conflict and overcame it, and that the next time he has to climb a mountain in life, he can do it with more confidence and endurance. And kudos to the principal for learning the best way to disarm an angry parent is to treat their kid as special as their momma thinks he is.
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