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Archives from 2002-2006

This is the book I’ve been reading to Riley before bedtime during the last couple weeks. It’s the first chapter book we’ve started, and it hasn’t been 100% easy going—at first, he complained a bit about the lack of pictures, and he doesn’t always pay attention the whole way through a reading. (Me: “What are you doing over there?” Riley, guiltily producing a LEGO mini-fig from beneath the covers: “Ummm . . . nothing.”)

Still, he asks for the story each night it’s my turn to put him to bed, and I enjoy making our way through something a bit more palatable than those surely-educational but horribly stilted I Can Read! books. (My god, MY KINGDOM FOR A CONTRACTION.)

Anyway, we’ll soon come to the end of Ralph and his adventures, and I’d like to ask you what books you most enjoy(ed) reading to your child—or that you remember from your own childhood. I’m looking specifically for more chapter books, things a six-year-old boy might like. Suggestions?

PS. Amusing object from The Mouse and the Motorcycle I had to spend about ten minutes explaining: a telephone cord.)

A few days ago I posted this on Twitter:

Saw a young kid angrily flailing and hitting a teacher when I picked up Riley today. Jeeeeeesus.

I wrote that because I’d just returned home and was still thinking about what I’d seen. I’d been bothered by it, quite a bit. I didn’t mean my comment to convey any kind of judgment but in retrospect I can see how it might have come across that way—so much is left unsaid, right? Like, did I mean “Jeeeeesus, what an asshole?” I did not, but I suppose it isn’t even remotely clear.

At any rate, someone emailed me about my tweet. She wrote that she hoped the kid was okay, that the teacher understood, and that the community tries to understand. She mentioned that while she wasn’t sure how I’d meant it, she thought I should see a blog post in which a parent detailed a struggle with her special needs child, one where he had a helpless reaction towards some other children that included hitting. She included one of the lines from the original post, which read:

“I expected to see everyone gawking, looks of shock mixed with pity and a dash of “don’t get near that kid, freak-out might be contagious” tossed in there for good measure.”

I read the post she linked (I asked Mir’s permission to link it from here as well), and it about broke my heart. It was so beautifully written, so vivid. I was glad to read on and see that the incident had happened in an supportive environment:

“Instead I saw… a few glances of concern. Kids who’d turned back to whatever they’d been doing before. A couple of understanding, encouraging looks in my direction. The main teacher walking over, asking (my son) if it was okay if she sat down, too. The parents of the other boys involved speaking quietly with them about what had happened.”

Still, my first reaction to receiving the email was one of confusion. Maybe defensiveness. I thought back on what I’d observed outside of Riley’s school and couldn’t see how I was supposed to understand it. I’d seen a teacher leading a young boy—her hand was on the top of his backpack, which he was wearing—towards the area where parents meet their kids, while the boy thrashed and furiously swung his arms at her. His grandmother had approached, looking completely helpless, and he screamed something at the teacher that caused her to say “I won’t let you speak to me that way.” The teacher then told the boy that she hoped he had a good weekend, and she walked away with the rest of the class while he stood there fuming, still yelling, still red-faced and out of control.

I couldn’t understand it because I didn’t know what was going on, I had no idea why the kid was acting out in that way, all I knew is that it looked intense and awful and a little scary. My reaction was pretty close to what Mir describes as being something she was worried about seeing on that day with her own son: I was absolutely shocked, for sure, and I felt miserable for everyone: the teacher, the boy, his family. I wasn’t worried that his freakout might be contagious, exactly, but in all honesty I wanted that kid to be gone—or at least greatly calmed down—before Riley came out of the school.

If what I saw from that unhappy boy isn’t uncommon—if striking out with words and violence is a reaction he occasionally cannot control—well, what then? How do parents and fellow students learn how to handle that in the right way? Because I don’t know how to see something like that and not find myself staring, not feel shocked. I don’t know how to not be worried about the safety of my own kid.

I have no idea if that boy was just having a colossally bad day, if he needs more help than this mainstream school can provide, or if he’s somewhere in the massive gray area in between. The last thing I ever want to do is seem as though I’m judging a child’s behavior, especially if it’s something he simply cannot help. So . . . what, then? I’m thinking I probably didn’t need to blurt out some random OMG I SAWR ME AN ANGRY KID post on Twitter, but in the moment, what should I have done? What if it happens again? How do I be the protective parent and the understanding community at the same time?

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