Interesting phone call...
 

I had an interesting phone call at work today from my son's school. I'll paraphrase the conversation as best as I can;

School: Hello. Mr. H?
Me: Yes, speaking.
School: It's about your son, he's in a bit of trouble.
Me: Really? What's the problem?
School: Well he told a girl that he was going to blow her up.

At this point I wanted to ask "What? You mean inflate her?" but I got the feeling that they were taking this seriously.

Me: Ohh...
School: I've called our security officer and he's on his way over.
Me: OK, so what do we do from here?
School: Well normally when a pupil has made a threat such as this they get suspended.
Me: Suspended?
School: Yes, but just for the day. You'll have to come and fetch him and take him home.
Me: Do you think that giving him the day off is the best thing to do?
School: Well that's up to the security officer, but it is the procedure...


Now, I can understand that schools have to take action when threats are made, and I in no way condone this kind of behaviour, but isn't this a little over the top?

My son is six years old and to the best of my knowledge doesn't have any explosives experience.
Apparently, according to the rest of the conversation, the girl "...had been playing in the car too long and my son and his friend wanted to play in it and this is when the threat was made"

Of course I spoke to him very seriously and told him that he can't and must not say things like this to people. He took it on board and learned his lesson, but I had a hard time restraining myself on the phone.

Am I being a little insensitive or is this a slight case of over reaction?

He's only 6 YEARS OLD!!! A kid that age for one doesn't really know what that means, secondly what are the chances of him knowing anything about explosives, and thirdly who told the principal, the other child or her mother/father???
This is getting out of hand!!!

my son just got suspended from afterschool for a week. His "third strike" was squirting soapy water on a kid that had squirted him first. The second strike was climbing the fence to come back in (after going out the gate), and the first offense was that him and his best friend were doing arm circles curing exercise period and got a little rambunctious and started whacking each other. His friend hit him hard enough to my son went down to the ground crying (then got right back up).

This is 4th grade.

Clearly your 6 year old will end up like my homicidal 10 year old. You better just turn him over to the juvenile detention facilities while you're still alive...

Dude, I was going to myself "holy *****, his kid sorta *****ed up, shoulda known better", then I got to the part where he's six.

WTF is his school thinking??? I'd raise some hell, but then, being a product of the public school system, I know exactly how much good that would do.

Agreed, serious overreaction.

Sad but with all the wierd junk that has gone down, they really don't know what to take seriously and to what degree either.

There is a little boy in our Daughters class who won't let her be - he has a crush. Our little one avoids him at all costs. She was telling me tonite about it and Our 8yr old heard it and said "I'm gonna punch his eye Dad!" I will bet a thousand dollars that she will go to school and tell this boy that her big brother is "gonna punch your eye!"

I'll get a call...

I think I should report your six year old son to the Homeland security people. Does he like lots of sunshine like they have in Gitmo?

PC and knee jerk reactions like this are ruining this country...

Yeah, one of them claimed to be "scarred for life" because of it.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of them seek counseling to help get over the trauma.

What I'd like tosay to the school administration is go fk yourselves, this is ridiclous.

The serious issue is for your kid not to be labeled as a "Threat to Society" before he turns out like Nostatuss kid...U have to protect him in some way that turns the situation into making the school administration into the problem and not your son. Its really not hard to do, I just don't have the answer for U at the moment.

I agree with tabs. This stuff goes into a file, and that file is reviewed by the teacher at the beginning of the school year. It totally colors how the school and the teacher treats a kid.

For ex., if 2 kids do the exact same minor bad act, the one who is on the "gifted" list did it because he is bored and not academically challenged enough. So some acting out is of course going to be expected. The kid on the "***** list" did it because he's a juvenile delinquent in training.

AMEN!

I dunno Wayne. I take a lot of abuse and rejection daily (I'm in sales) and it just rolls off but call me a racial slur and you're going down.

Aerkuld, I'd tell the school to get bent, just not in those words of course.

So what racial slur gets you going? Just curious.

slur slur slur!

hmm, that is only an "m" away from slurm.

Nostatus the School District is building a case against your kid...you better beware of that Bureaucracy....and the Label it can stick on him...Do U understand...

U never let a Bureaucracy get away with BS. If U do it can come back and haunt U one day. Far better to nip it in the bud before it even gets going.

tabs, we've been dealing with the bureaucracy since kindergarten. We know the system and know how to work it. You have to pick your battles.

what's skool..?

Don't want to say because you might use it on me and I'd have to break out skillz and go all Stan Lee on you :D

This is just mind bottling!

Re: Interesting phone call...
 

Oh, how beautiful if would use this line in a written appeal on behalf of your son! Fantastic.

When my son was 6 I got a call from a very disturbed principal who wanted me to come to the school immediately. Seems my son had behaved badly. Very badly. In fact he may have "exposed" himself inappropriately!

I rushed to the school and the principal informed me that he and two other boys were caught peeing in the drain in the center of the floor in the boys bathroom. I chuckled and confessed to the humorless principal that I remember doing the same thing as a kid. (Wrong approach, by the way.)

The principal asked what I thought we should do about the incident and I suggested she should make my son scrub the entire bathroom floor. She told me she thought the offense was far more serious than that. I told her it really wasn't and left her office.

Update: He's 16 now and doesn't pee in the drain at high school to my knowledge.

What else can one expect from the new generation, flooded with stupidity, violence and cruelty by our generations. Sad. Even more sad that school personnel do not have the capacity and competence to discriminate between the normal behavior of a six year old unable to understand the full context of words he has picked up from adult television and the full Monty of evil calculated evilness.

I'm sensitive about my hair too now that it's thinning ; )

I went to an inner city elementary and middle school. We moved to the suburbs during my freshman year in high school. There were less than 10 minorities in the entire student body of about 1200. I was called every Asian racial slur in the book. Got into fights, got beat up. This was in the late seventies. Bad memories. I didn't trust Anglos until I was in my mid-twenties.

I'd be willing to bet that the school's response is tied to some sort of "zero tolerance" or "three strike" legislation introduced and voted in by a conservative legislature. Most of that stuff has taken away any discretion the school may have ever had.

my experience with this sort of issue is that something bad happens somewhere and the parents for states around go to school board meetings and start asking what the school system is doing to prevent this bad thing from happening here. The school board not having any clue (ever) drafts up some idiotic rules that get pushed down to the schools. The principals not wanting to be accused of not protecting the kids apply the rules rigidly with no thought or analysis. Actually, it seems like the boy in this case is at least getting the benefit of a ruling by security.

Its pathetic really. Nobody bothers to think anymore. Its sort of like suspending 1st graders because someone kissed someone (sexual assault). These are kids, not adults and they don't have the judgment to always know the difference between appropriate and over the line.

No kidding! TV distorts one's perception of reality, especially for children and teens that can't fully compartmentalize what their watching. IMO the violence on TV is one of the most damaging behaviors we tolerate as a society.

The zero-tolerance policy here caused an initial suspension of a 2nd grade girl for having a Tweety Bird keychain attached to her backpack. It had a 6 inch chain - which caused the authorities to them deem it as a weapon! Public outcry eventually caused them to reverse course and cancel the suspension.

How do they "justify" allowing 8 inch long sharpened pencils on school premises? They are a much more "dangerous" weapon.

Well guys, I have a confession to make.
It's taken me a long time to recognize this...sniff.....but after so many years, I have finally been able to come to grips with my situation.

You see, when I was three or four, my mother opened the door to my sisters room and found my sisters friend Kitty, about 7, naked on top of me. She had been molesting me... sniff.
The two of them also used to dress me in womens clothing and probably used to call me names which scarred me for life and ruined my self-image permanently.

Attorney retained. Now all I have to do is track her down and hope she has a succesful career.

mmmm....Slurm....

Yup!

Okay...

When I was six (and GI Joe and Transformers were popular), I probably threatened to "blow up" another kid about a dozen times a day. I never got in trouble for it. I did get in trouble when I actually hit another kid.

What about the family where the kid (like 6 years old) put his head against the teachers chest. She wrote him (a 6 year old) up for sexular harrassment. The parents are fighting it so that he will not be labeled a "sex offender" at age 6.

Advice to parents: You MUST.....ABSOLUTELY MUST engage your child's school in a dialogue. Your child will not be judged or treated appropriately unless you do.

I recently had a meeting with my daughter's teachers in which the math teacher said some very interesting things. She said, and repeated a dozen times, that certain decisions were made by others and she was not fully informed and so it was not her fault. I could have slapped her after the first five times.

But the stunning remark she made is that she apparently does not care, or look into, why a student is not succeeding. She doesn't have any interest in the reason(s) why a student is not getting acceptable grades. She of course assumed my daughter is not proficient at math. Ironically, my daughter is borderline genius at math.

Engage. You MUST. Nobody else is sticking up for your child. Failure to engage will doom the child to mediocre service from the school. Public or private. Show your child that you love them and respect them.

And let the boys have at each other at recess. If the school tries to prevent boys from being boys.......some of those kids will grow up like Dubya.

So you are saying, Supe, that it is the parent's responsibility that their child receives a proper education?

Who da thunk?

In one way, all of this careful consideration is breeding a new sort of Victorian age of childhood with the appearance of proper action and refined response. On the otherside there is going to be a shyt load of repressed anomosity and ill will because kids will have to watch everything they say and judge how it will be taken. I can see both sides.

We are trying to teach Our Kids to have thicker skin and at the same time don't say anything that would hurt someones feelings.

Tough balance.

I was six once.

I DID have explosives experience. 500 bottle rockets were a buck on the streets of Ensenada.

I went thru the Catholic School experience ALL THE WAY, Grammar School, High School, and College.

Teachers were Nuns (not the civilian clothes pantywaists you see now) in full battle dress with rulers sharpened, and the Christian Brothers (they make wine for a hobby). Nothing got by this gang. When I got too big for corporal punishment, I got to be the gardener at the convent and rectory on Saturdays. My parents thought I was going to be a gardener.

I accidentally broke a girls' arm in 3rd grade (I caught her as she fell off of the merry-go-round). nonetheless, it was somehow my fault. Got 3 months of gardening for that. Blowing up the baby Jesus statue in the school Christmas display? Only a month.

There is a lesson there.

don't let your sons grow up to be Catholics?

Ok, will bite. You are a balding poopy head!

Course I am already bald and after spending the night (and part of this morning) debating Speeder, all my political and racial poop is run out of me, but like Tabs, one buffet and I will fill it right back up! :)

And now for something completely different.....
 

A guy goes to the supermarket and notices a beautiful blond woman wave at him and say hello.

He's rather taken aback, because he can't place where he knows her from. So he says, "Do you know me?"

To which she replies, "I think you're the father of one of my kids."

Now his mind travels back to the only time he has ever been unfaithful to his wife and says, "My God, are you the stripper from my bachelor party that I laid on the pool table with all my buddies watching, while your partner whipped my butt with wet celery and then stuck a carrot up my ass???"

She looks directly into his eyes and calmly says,

"No, I'm your son's math teacher."