Okay, so today is Monday. I just got off the phone with Max’s teacher.
We have an issue but the school is trying to downplay it. It might not sound very major to people but I think it does to a young child.
Basically what happened was that my son brought a box of fish fingers to have for lunch. He is on a special diet and we had sent them in a gluten free batter.
Now he was only supposed to eat half of them and save the rest in the school refrigerator.
He didn’t understand that so he cooked them and only ate what he could; the rest he through away.
This happened on Thursday last week. My wife made mention of it in the daily record that gets passed to and from school every day.
Apparently her comment was misunderstood. Max was grilled about what happened and afterwards they concluded he was lying about the situation.
The result was he was placed on red!!
For those who don’t know what that is about some schools rate behavior with colors:
- green – safe
- yellow - some issues
- red - unsafe behavior
But wait a minute you might ask. How is lying an unsafe behavior?
Good question.
It seems that unlike some of the other kids my son rarely or never does anything unsafe at school so they treat him differently. For him, lying puts him in red territory.
To me this is funny…sad. Max may have a lot of behaviors that aren’t so good but lying isn’t one of them. It’s not that he doesn’t know what a lie is; he just likes telling the truth about everything. Even things he shouldn’t.
So he was punished on Friday.
When he got home he was very angry. Why did that happen? Why had we called the school and gotten him punished?
He had no idea!
We called the school but it was closed for the weekend. The teacher called us back this morning. And oh, she said, it was just a misunderstanding.
“But you know that he had no idea what you were talking about?” I asked her.
“He must have. He admitted to lying about it.”
“I’m sorry but when Max is put on the spot and doesn’t even know what you are talking about he will tell you what he thinks you want to hear.”
She said she would talk to him about it and smooth things over.
I mentioned to my wife that he was now out of the running for the monthly prize. All the kids that are on green for the whole month get to have a private lunch with the principal. Because he has been on red forget about it.
My wife shrugged. She said it’s not so bad; he doesn’t even care about the prize. And he’ll forget about the punishment.
I’m not so sure.
I’ve heard the experts (therapists, doctors, well meaning parents) say things like “he’ll get over it” when something they consider minor happens.
Sometimes maybe and with some children but in a lot of cases I don’t believe it.
When I was growing up I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ house.
One time their shower rod fell down and my granddad had to fix it. I was blamed even though I had not been near it. They claimed I had been swinging on it and that’s why it broke.
They weren’t generally like this so it was a shock that I was being blamed. It hurt me very badly. But guess what, everyone said I’d get over it.
I didn’t.
I ended up cutting back my time with them because it made me feel uncomfortable being there.
Same thing happened with my uncle. I used to spend a lot of time at his house as well. But then one day he blamed me for something that I had nothing to do with. This man that I idolized ignored me for three days.
I was wounded.
I didn’t spend very much time with him after that either.
Well of course a lot of people will say that I was overly sensitive.
Perhaps I was.
But you never know what child is not going to just “get over it”!!
Will Max get over this punishment?
I don’t know. I do know that there are a lot of things that he is keeping to himself that have hurt him over the years.
Parents, teachers, just well meaning people in general can hurt a child without knowing it.
I am becoming more aware of my actions around my son. I can even see how other people’s actions can hurt him.
I think some actions may be unintentional and may be ignored by the kids but how you handle fixing these mistakes can affect them.
This was a misunderstood situation for Max. How the teacher handles it could affect him adversely.
5 comments for this post
Hi, I would love to ask/discuss the food dye issues with you. My 9 year old son has had some very violent episodes, massive tantrums in the past year. He was having hives, nasal congestion, throwing up, etc. We had all allergy testing done, food elimantion. Everything came back negative. I was ready to put him on bipolar/mood disorder medicine because I couldn’t handle it anymore. It was ruining our family. By sheer luck, he threw up a red popsicle and a light went off. Maybe it was the food dyes. Every medicine I was giving him had dye in it. For over a week now he has been dye free and he is the sweetest, nicest, calmest kid you have ever seen. Like your son, he did not like change, (like the church incident) and for a week I have seen nothing like that. Sorry this is so long winded, I am just soooo excited to have found the answer. I am wanting to talk to other people who are going through the same thing, I am getting tired of the bad parenting stigma also. Thanks.
Okay, just read a post from April 2010(I think) and it talked about going to the movies. You used to let him get a blue drink and popcorn but noticed it riled him up. If you go dye free (not easy to do) you will have a new kid. Every post could have been written by me about my 9 year old. One of the main things with dye in it was all the medicines I was giving him! Who would have ever thought? We didn’t ever have punch, koolaid, slushies, etc. at our house or I am sure he would have been labled bipolar before now. You do have to read the labels on everything very carefully.
That’s very true! Max has gotten very good at reading food and drink labels. Found a package of m&ms on the street yesterday and passed them off to a friend because he knew he could eat them. My wife always questions the meds now, if there’s dye, she looks for an alternative.
Though it’s easy at home for my son to skip the food and drinks, when he is out with his friends and that’s what they are eating it frustrates him. Does your 9 year old find this?
I am so excited for you! Max is the sweetest kids sometimes but he still gets explosive, and the dyes make it worse. He is still sadly on meds but we continue to look for other things to replace them.
I am just soooo excited to have found the answer. I am wanting to talk to other people who are going through the same thing, I am getting tired of the bad parenting stigma also. Thanks.
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