Friday, April 11, 2008
My Son The Patriotic Gay Right Defender
It’s Friday. It’s Friday. It’s Friday (imagine me singing this while doing a little jig.) I get to not do homework with kids tonight. I get to not make sure kids are well fed and in bed (truly I could care less what time they fall asleep on the weekends.) I get to not prepare lunches for tomorrow and I get to have a glass of wine with M and read my new book until the wee hours of the morning…..then I get to sleep in….ahhhh
On a different note, Sam won an essay competition on Patriotism. It is a state wide project where he will have to read his final draft in front of thousands of veterans. Pretty cool. No? Something else happened with Sam this week, but more of the disturbing nature….
It was Wednesday night and I heard Sam speaking on the phone. His voice was loud and at first I thought that he was angry, but once I found which room he was in and could see him I saw that he was desperate and frustrated. Long story, less long…Sam has befriended a boy in his grade who is gay. It seems this boy was being taunted by some older kids and feeling really depressed. Sam and his group of buddy’s (the football team no less, which makes this tale even more interesting) were on a conference call planning a strategy to get the bully’s off this boys back… Oh Boy. This is not easy! This is not in the “how to mother” handbook. So I will tell you how I handled it and you can tell me what a good or bad job I did.
I first went to explain the situation to M and make sure that we were in complete agreement with our mutual feelings. M and I then sat with Sam and told him that he can not save this boy from all of his future struggles (it’s not his job, his job is to become Sam), but we would allow him and his friends to STRONGLY, without any actual violence, suggest to the bullies that they lay off the poor kid. I then went and called all of the other parents to make sure they agreed….and surprisingly, they did.
So today was the day of the confrontation and I am waiting for Sam to get back from lacrosse practice. I am anxious with anticipation.
I realize that there are a lot of people out there that may feel that I should have turned the whole thing over to the school officials, and in most circumstances I would agree, but in this case, the boy was already receiving special services and the taunting was sneaky. It would just be a he said she said situation.
So that’s the news for today.
heck out my blog
http://averyopenbook.blogspot.com/