Sticks and Stones

I think I kinda jinx my son!! Every time I whine about how quiet things have been at school, something happens! Talk about spooookkky!!

I believe it was Friday that I was whining and then Friday afternoon I get a call from the teacher. She asks me to call her back; she needed to let me know what happened at the end of the day. OH BOY, I thought!! Z called me though before I could pick up the phone to call the teacher. He was extremely agitated and sound like he had been crying. He said to me “I hate that class, I hate those kids, they are racist and I WANT TO BE TRANSFERRED to another school!”

Whoa, I thought to myself and I asked what happened. I got a bunch of mumbles and yells, behind the tears and sniffles I managed to figure out that one of the boys in his class called him a “cracker”!!!!!!!!!

I immediately said “I’ll call you right back.” I hung up the phone in fear that my son responded with his own racist comment and I called the teacher.

The teacher said that his day went very well until him and one of the kids decided to play UNO together. The squabbled back and forth, typical crap “You didn’t draw 2”, “You didn’t say UNO” and so on. She said that is why she doesn’t usually allow the kids to play that game in class. So that escalated to more bickering and name calling, that turned into swearing at each other and then the boy screamed at my son “You’re a F’in Cracker”.

My first question to the teacher was, “What did Z call him back?” She said he was swearing at the boy, saying things a truck driver would say, but never responded with a racist name.” My first thought was, Thank goodness!! She said he did handle himself fairly well considering, she said if he had stopped swearing when he was asked to, he would not have lost his level 3. He is now down to a 2. I have never been put in that position before, so I don’t know how I would have reacted either.

I have never raised my son to use those names. Therefore I would never, ever expect him to say something like that. If he did, I would be appalled and embarrassed. Sometimes I look at they way some of these kids behave and try to remember that is what they learned at home. Like Z and swearing. In my family, you swear when you’re happy, when you’re sad, when you’re mad. I still should know better and not swear around him, there really is no excuse for it. The last couple of months I have found myself thinking about what I say before I say it.

So later that night my husband and I talked to Z about what happened in class that day, we told him that what the boy said was not acceptable and we were very proud of him for not making a racist comment back. That would have been the easy thing to do.
We also told him that the swearing is unacceptable, even though we know that we do it a lot, it still does not make it right and we need to be sure that we do less of it.

Hopefully Z can keep his eye in the prize and the prize is……..As of the new year Z will be slowly released back into the main stream school system!! I am so excited.

I wasn’t going to tell Z, but I did! I wanted him to know, to realize and to see how hard he has worked so far this year and not to lose focus. He is very excited, as he should be!!!!

Remember Z…..
Sticks and stones,
May break my bones,
But words will never hurt me