Friday – Special Places and Familiar Faces
Oct. 1st, 2010 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
.
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We all want our children to feel special, but none of us want our children to be or feel "special." Those quotation marks make for a world of difference: special is good, but "special" is not.
"I'm the only 'special' kid in my class!" Sweet Pea told his father yesterday. He was pretty proud of this. When Jeff passed the message along to me, I flinched.
"Great," I said softly. I was going to let it slide and not tell Sweet Pea about the quotation marks around the word. Jeff, though, let him know that they meant he was "special" because he acted up more than the other kids, and that this is not a good thing.
Yesterday's report in his conduct folder informed us of one hit, one kick, one toe stomp (that was something new – we told him not to bite, and this was the alternative he came up with), and one trip to the principal's office. I can certainly understand why they see him as "special." On the other hand, he got all his work done in the morning. They listed that because they try to give us at least one positive thing in every report. Sometimes it is very obvious that they are struggling hard to come up with something. Other times, they happily report good news so depressing that it makes me want to cry: "Today [Sweet Pea] sat and played quietly with another child for the first time!" :)
For the first time? Five weeks into the school year? I suppose I should have celebrated, as the exclamation point and the smiley face indicated I should. Instead, I put my elbows on the kitchen table and buried my face in my hands for a few moments. Could he tell me the name of the child he played with? Of course not. He doesn't know. All the children that he sees every day are strangers to him.
Even the ones he likes are strangers. A funny thing happened at the local bookstore last weekend. While I stood talking to Judy, who works behind the counter, Sweet Pea walked over to the children's section to browse. It is a used bookstore, and on the Saturday special is to buy two children's book and to get a third one free. He was on a mission to find 3 books that he liked. The hard cover children's books tend to run between $2.50 and $3.50, so getting 3 books for $7 or less is not a bad deal. Another boy, who looked to be about 7, greeted Sweet Pea by name.
"Do I know you?" Sweet Pea asked.
The little boy responded that of course he did; they were both in the YMCA After-School Care program. That satisfied Sweet Pea and they took went off to explore the bookstore together (it is a tiny shop; so I did not need to worry about them getting lost or into mischief).
Sweet Pea knew this child, and no doubt they had played together before on plenty of occasions. But he knew him in the context of the YMCA After-School Program, not that of the bookstore. The boy had a familiar face but was in the wrong place – making him unfamiliar. I've been pondering the significance of this for a week now.
I mentioned to Judy and her daughter-in-law, Kristen (the shop proprietress), about my upcoming team meeting and Sweet Pea's problems at school. Kristen had been through a team meeting before for one of her children (who she said did not have the problems they tried to tell her he had and that he was fine once he was in a different teacher's class). The meeting had left her in tears. Before she left the store to go home, she wrapped her arms around me to hug me.
"It's going to be okay," she said. I don't think I'd ever touched Kristen before, much less hugged her, so I was taken by surprise. The sadness and sympathy in her eyes unnerved me a bit; it felt like she saw me as a soldier who had just announced I was about to be shipped out to a very hostile war zone where my chances of survival were uncertain.
"I know," I said. Because everything always works out one way or another, right? "Okay" is a relative state of being; life is "special" in that way.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
We all want our children to feel special, but none of us want our children to be or feel "special." Those quotation marks make for a world of difference: special is good, but "special" is not.
"I'm the only 'special' kid in my class!" Sweet Pea told his father yesterday. He was pretty proud of this. When Jeff passed the message along to me, I flinched.
"Great," I said softly. I was going to let it slide and not tell Sweet Pea about the quotation marks around the word. Jeff, though, let him know that they meant he was "special" because he acted up more than the other kids, and that this is not a good thing.
Yesterday's report in his conduct folder informed us of one hit, one kick, one toe stomp (that was something new – we told him not to bite, and this was the alternative he came up with), and one trip to the principal's office. I can certainly understand why they see him as "special." On the other hand, he got all his work done in the morning. They listed that because they try to give us at least one positive thing in every report. Sometimes it is very obvious that they are struggling hard to come up with something. Other times, they happily report good news so depressing that it makes me want to cry: "Today [Sweet Pea] sat and played quietly with another child for the first time!" :)
For the first time? Five weeks into the school year? I suppose I should have celebrated, as the exclamation point and the smiley face indicated I should. Instead, I put my elbows on the kitchen table and buried my face in my hands for a few moments. Could he tell me the name of the child he played with? Of course not. He doesn't know. All the children that he sees every day are strangers to him.
Even the ones he likes are strangers. A funny thing happened at the local bookstore last weekend. While I stood talking to Judy, who works behind the counter, Sweet Pea walked over to the children's section to browse. It is a used bookstore, and on the Saturday special is to buy two children's book and to get a third one free. He was on a mission to find 3 books that he liked. The hard cover children's books tend to run between $2.50 and $3.50, so getting 3 books for $7 or less is not a bad deal. Another boy, who looked to be about 7, greeted Sweet Pea by name.
"Do I know you?" Sweet Pea asked.
The little boy responded that of course he did; they were both in the YMCA After-School Care program. That satisfied Sweet Pea and they took went off to explore the bookstore together (it is a tiny shop; so I did not need to worry about them getting lost or into mischief).
Sweet Pea knew this child, and no doubt they had played together before on plenty of occasions. But he knew him in the context of the YMCA After-School Program, not that of the bookstore. The boy had a familiar face but was in the wrong place – making him unfamiliar. I've been pondering the significance of this for a week now.
I mentioned to Judy and her daughter-in-law, Kristen (the shop proprietress), about my upcoming team meeting and Sweet Pea's problems at school. Kristen had been through a team meeting before for one of her children (who she said did not have the problems they tried to tell her he had and that he was fine once he was in a different teacher's class). The meeting had left her in tears. Before she left the store to go home, she wrapped her arms around me to hug me.
"It's going to be okay," she said. I don't think I'd ever touched Kristen before, much less hugged her, so I was taken by surprise. The sadness and sympathy in her eyes unnerved me a bit; it felt like she saw me as a soldier who had just announced I was about to be shipped out to a very hostile war zone where my chances of survival were uncertain.
"I know," I said. Because everything always works out one way or another, right? "Okay" is a relative state of being; life is "special" in that way.
