This still feels so incomplete to me. I went back and forth that the child who got in trouble got in trouble for something he had been explicitly warned against and something about it felt disingenuous, manipulative. But maybe that is a cause for even greater compassion? And then he wrote a letter of apology where he accused himself of being “monstrous” which I didn’t allow into the revision.

The Judith Warner brought up all of my own chafing at being told who I was as a pre-teen, and wondering to what extent I do that with my boys.

The expectations of schools is a whole ‘nother conversation, of course, but I grew up with teacher parents who thought of the system as already broken, so I get to be astonished when it works at all. I observe funny reactions in myself to the school as an institution, feel like I am too cowed to be a proper advocate for the boys, but then also cynical in funny ways.

I’m pretty sure that we all have those secret thoughts about other people’s kids (the one’s who have different issues than our own kids have). However, not everyone has the courage or even the self awareness to talk about it. I had this moment of clarity the other day (I’m sure it was just coincidence that it happened right after an exchange with one of the more smug moms at the homeschool co-op) when I became really grateful for all the “problems” we’ve had with our first born because otherwise I could have continued being the smug, self-satisfied, why doesn’t everybody do it like I do it kind of mothers that I was when we first re-connected in Austin. Remember how I knew it all back then? Remember? ugh. It’s embarrassing to think back to those days.

Just think of all the opportunities for spiritual growth our children are providing us with. Hey, and since we each have four children does that mean that we will be more spiritually evolved than the poor slobs with just two kids? uh oh. I think I just stumbled into another land mine of smugness. Thank goodness I don’t actually believe that.

Okay, one last thought. Why shouldn’t we expect our schools to meet our kids’ needs? I’m pretty sure I do expect that, which is maybe why I’ve been so dismayed with them. What are the pros and cons to each position?

This is the one.

I’m thinking of Judith Warner, who wrote a great essay on this sort of over-identification.

I do identify though with the thought (even w/a toddler): “for all my thinking this and feeling this I cannot protect them from the mistakes they make, the problems they have, the learning they must do.” Ugh.

And–it seems to me that it is ALWAYS an attempt to figure exactly this out: “what’s about me and what’s about them.” Indeed.

P: Don’t you think you ought to return to the classroom and apologize?
Me: (Flatly) No.
P: Why not?
Me: Because I didn’t do anything wrong

Finally, in an act of desperation the Principal said that she was going to have to call my parents and discuss my suspension from school, because I was such an unruly child, to which I finally agreed to apologize (for what I had no idea).

Jenny talking to D. about Ben on “lost”

D.: So he really is evil.
J: Not necessarily, it is never as simple as good and bad, most people think they are doing good for the right reasons…

Atticus: “you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.”