Intimidated

So before bed last night I noticed we hadn’t used our home phone all day and thus had not noticed a voicemail. It was from the school counselor at our kindergartner’s school, asking us to call back. I am embarrassed to describe the anxiety I felt and how I tried to analyze the message, “She called us Mara and Raven, not Ms. Collins and Mr. Zachary. Surely if it were really bad we’d be getting Mr. and Mrs. treatment?”

In our last six years as public school parents, and even the year before when our oldest was in pre-k, we’ve sort of gotten used to — or maybe you never get used to, but gotten less surprised by — getting the phone call from the school telling us some way some son of ours has failed to conform to standards of conduct. All three of the boys who are now in school have gotten in trouble at least a couple of times, often for good reasons, like #2 joining some friends in kindergarten throwing dirt clods from the playground at passing cars (ouch! I do not condone this, am I making that clear?) I don’t want to sound defensive or delusional when I say, though, that my boys are generally on the well-behaved end of the spectrum — I can expect them to sit quietly at Sunday morning devotions when many of their peers do not, we have interesting conversations about ethics, they mostly get along pretty sweetly, and when they don’t I try to make that an opportunity to practice problem-solving skills. I insist on respect for adults generally and teachers especially, and have agonized to find the right balance between firm and empathetic as a parent, and am mostly really proud of them, feel pretty good about being connected with them. So why do I anticipate a phone call from someone administrative at a school as being trouble?

I think about how I NEVER got in trouble in school growing up. Ok, once. In 4th grade we bobbed for apples and Mrs. Card’s big curly hair-do was plastered to her head and I was trying to be funny and said something about her head not being as big as I thought and I didn’t realize it would hurt her feelings, honest, and I still feel pangs of shame about that. My dearest, sweet husband on the other hand — well I think he got in trouble enough for stupid things that it somehow acted as an inoculation. Like, you get in trouble for stupid things, and you realize it isn’t the end of the world, and it doesn’t touch your sense of yourself, your faith in yourself. I also think that it resulted in Raven being really, really difficult to intimidate. Whereas me? I feel like I am breaking the rules not buying glasses at the optometrist’s office, especially when they go on about the dire consequences of how difficult it is to get a scrip for my astigmatism correct, and what a hassle it will be to return glasses bought on-line, and this does not make for me being a Happy Person. Truth be told, I would rather have my boys grow up making mistakes and not being easy to intimidate than have them grow up afraid of making mistakes even if their perfect behavior feeds my ego about what a Great Mom I am.

In case you’re wondering about what the counselor wanted? Raven called her back this morning, and the school had had an incentive program to reward kids with over 90% attendance with Portland Trailblazers tickets, but had only received a number of tickets equal to the number of students (which was 37) and so they were hoping to find out which kids really cared about going to Blazers game (not ours!) and sending them home with two tickets so an adult could accompany them (sort of important for the population of this school) and rewarding the rest of the kids with something like a party. Not a big deal, in fact, at all, this time.