That child.

My son has been having a hard time at school lately. Not with his school work, he seems to be doing well with that, but with another student. When he came home yesterday and told me that he was in trouble, I was so mad. I tried to remain calm and talk it out with him and get to the root of the situation, but all I managed to do was stammer out some sort of punishment - removing the Xbox and computer games - and send him to his room.

Then when I got the remaining kids involved in something (okay, I just told them to go outside, GO!) I took a minute and gathered my wits and tried to think of a solution to the problem. I managed to come up with a little something: he had to write apology notes to both the child at school, and the teacher. He also had to go apologize to the child in person, nicely. (That last one was my husband's idea, and a much better one than mine, I admit.)

He has been having a hard time with this child ever since the child came to school here mid-year. The child was not a bully, per se, but someone who was insecure about being in a new school and acted out. The child is a rough-and-tumble child who acted tough to hide the insecurity. And now my son has it in his mind that this child is a bad child, and is acting on that by not being very nice.

It's given me pause, this whole situation; made me sit and think about the kind of childhood I had and the kind that my own children have. In raising your children, you try to give them all of the good from your own upbringing, and also remove what was "bad". (And I say "bad" in quotes because I didn't have a bad childhood. There were just certain things that were harder for me because of who I am and also because of situations I was in.) I want my children to have the good things in life and never feel like they are out of place; like they don't belong. (Tall order, I know.) But I also do not want them to be spoiled brats. So they don't get everything they want, but they do get extras. They do not go everywhere they want to go, but they do visit special places. They don't necessarily get all of the latest things (like Crocs, for one - I hate those things) but they do have nice clothes and nice shoes. And I think I had a point here but I seemed to have lost track of it...

Oh...I don't know how to say what I'm trying to say without getting knee-deep into a lot of psycho-babble that I just don't want to write about. Let's just say that I've never been on the other side of making a child feel bad, and my son was that child yesterday. That child who may have made another feel bad in school, and I really don't like it. No one should be made to feel bad in school. It happens, I know. But not from my child, ever again.

(I hope.)