She Finds the Right Words

“Mama, I wasn’t aggressive today at school.”

This is usually the first thing Margaret tells me when she comes home from school, whether or not it’s true. She is in third grade, and she wants to believe what she says, so she presents it as true. I want to believe her, but I check her behavior sheets to be sure. The sheets come home everyday.

If they are filled with frowning faces, I know it’s been a rough school day, the teachers dealing with a child who refuses to do her work, refuses to cooperate or listen, who says rude things to her classmates, who sasses the teacher and who may make another child cry with cruel comments.

If the sheets have smiley faces, break out the champagne. I am grateful and relieved that another child isn’t telling her mother or daddy, “That blond girl Margaret slapped/kicked/pushed me today. Or made me cry. Or said I smelled because I have black skin.”

I don’t know why Margaret slaps other children or her teachers. It’s not a fist, and it doesn’t hurt, but touching another person isn’t allowed. Especially not in anger. She doesn’t know either, but we continue to try and coach her to use words, not her hands, to express her feelings. I know why she says mean things to African American boys, but she is working on seeing them for who they are on the inside, not for what they wear on the outside.

My very verbal daughter can’t find the right word to apologize? I find that difficult to believe. She loves new words. Ubiquitous. Marvelous. Exquisite. She repeats the words over and over, testing and tasting them. Repentance. Anguish. Sorrow. These don’t work as well for her.

I don’t understand Margaret’s reasoning abilities at all. When I tell her she hasn’t earned a trip to the library, but her sister has, why does she blame her sister for my decision? She once told me that Clara was the most powerful person in our house. Yes, a nine-year-old is calling the shots. How does she come up with these ideas?

But on some days, Margaret acts like the person I hope she will become. She is thoughtful, kind and insightful. And non-judgmental.

We had one of those days earlier this week. We had walked to our neighborhood grocery store to buy hamburger buns. A mom was pushing a stroller with a baby in the jump seat. A protective pad covered the seat, and there was a catheter snaking out of his short pants into a bag in the cart itself. He wore an oxygen necklace in his nose. His arms and legs were pencil thin and his fingers seemed to have spasticity. His face was so tense, he looked like he was counting out a difficult financial transaction.

Margaret didn’t see the toddler’s problems, didn’t see the fatigue on his mother’s face, the cautious way she looked at other people who were staring at her son. “Hey,” said my girl, “Cute baby. Did he drop this?” and she handed the mom a toy that had fallen from the cart. “Have a good day!” The mom smiled, then looked at me and smiled even wider.

Outside the store, I wiped away a few tears and gathered Margaret into my arms and hugged as tightly as I could, something she loves. “My darling girl,” I said. “You are perfect. I love you madly.”

“Oh, Mama. I love you, too,” she said.

End of the School Year

Next Friday, second grade will end for Clara and Margaret. It seems like just a few weeks ago that they were worrying about having to attend a new school, and now they are fretting a bit about having to leave it. Both girls love their classroom teachers--a huge difference for Clara, whose first grade teacher didn't "get" her. That poor woman came to her classroom in November and then drove those children like Sherman through Georgia to cover all the material they hadn't covered in the first three months. I understand why she did it, but those poor kids seemed to have no fun at all. This year, she is having fun and learning a lot. Thanks to her teacher and the media center director, Andy Plemmons. She loves him and all the cool things they do in the library.
Margaret may be understanding why good behavior is essential to doing well at school. Still not really sure if she gets it. But her behavior has been so much better the past few weeks. She will sometimes fall off the wagon--yesterday, for example, she kicked a kid instead of asking him to move out of the way--but by and large, she is much improved. She loves Kate Wright, which is a bonus. Margaret does well if she likes the person in charge. I guess we all do.
Being out of work means I have had the chance to spend time with both of them. They each wish the other person would just disappear so they could have me to themselves all the time. Sigh. I hear from other parents how badly their children treat each other but it doesn't make me feel better. All I want for Mother's Day is a day in which the girls treat each other as nicely as they do their friends. Is that really too much to ask?

Those Labels are Heavy to Carry

It is an eye-opening experience to have a child in public school with a special education label. I have one. My other child does not carry such a label. Margaret's problems are mostly of her own making, but are exacerbated by a system that doesn't address the underlying reasons for her behavior, whatever they might be. She sometimes misbehaves, by lying on the floor, refusing to do work she is more than capable of doing, calling other students "cheater" or "liar" or "copycatter." On one occasion, she pinched the special ed teacher.
I think some of the adults at her school expect her to misbehave. And she lives up to every expectation.
When she refuses to cooperate, the teacher takes her to the assistant principal. This is the woman who has already suspended her. For doing something that is on her IEP, individualized education plan, and for which she should not be punished. The regional director backed up the assistant's decision, but legal evidence does not. Without the funds to hire an attorney and remove this from Margaret's record, I know it will follow her throughout elementary school like a vicious dog. What was this assistant principal thinking? Did she think that would teach anything to Margaret, who loves to be home?
As a special ed student, she is expected to do poorly at various tasks. Math is one such task.
Margaret just can't add. She can't subtract. She just can't do it. This is what we are told.
So Gene decided to get involved. Armed with flash cards and a pointer, he drilled into Margaret's sticky little brain a bunch of math facts and families of numbers. 1 + 2 = 3, 1 + 4 + 5, and so on, all the way to 9 + 8 +17. She has gone from hating math and refusing to do it to viewing "math with Daddy" as a reward. She can do it now because she thinks she can do it. And she wants to.
She reels off the answers to equations without even thinking about them.
The next frontier is handwriting. Stay tuned.

Losing baby teeth

Margaret's two front teeth were getting bucked out by the new permanent pushing on them. I wondered if I should take her to the dentist. Instead, I encouraged her to wiggle those teeth. She wiggled like crazy. We were eating corn on the cob and Margaret came up with one of her teeth gone. She had swallowed it, as she has all the other teeth she has lost. The next morning, we were headed to Margaret's occupational therapist. I told Margaret to wiggle and she grabbed her tooth and twisted it around and Boink! It came out in her hand. I felt a little lightheaded, but it didn't seem to bother her one bit. Last night, she got her first ever money from the tooth fairy. She held up her dough and said, "Now I can buy everything!" Would that that were so.

Clara's teeth are almost in. Thank goodness, both girls have Gene's teeth. No cavities and no problems. The new comes are coming in straight. Unlike me, who had three teeth in one space and who had to wear a space maintainer to push apart my teeth to make room for my permanent teeth, which traveled from my spine to my mouth all during elementary school. Glad Clara and Margaret won't have that problem.

Where has the school year gone? In the afternoons of seeing the school bus stop at the end of our sidewalk, in the mornings when I woke the girls before light to bowls of oatmeal and helped them pull on their blue or white polo shirts and navy skirts or pants. I tried to quit or at least pause work in the afternoons when they arrived at 3 so we could play or walk to the nearby business district and get ice cream at a neighborhood drugstore. The owners knows their names and knows that Margaret likes vanilla and Clara likes chocolate.
Here in the post No Child Left Behind (and no testing corporation either) World, I despair a little for public education. There are no toys in kindergarten. It's time for sight words, math word problems and reading. Clara is already oriented towards numbers, probably because we like that she can count and add, but there are kids in her class who can't count or read--and yet, they are being told to do word problems. What happened to learning through play? And learning to get along?
Margaret has been in special ed for her fine motor delays, and she can now write. Slowly, and not very well, but she can write nevertheless. We will work on this with her this summer.
She is ready to join her swim team. Hold on to your hats for that.
When the girls get home from school today, we will leave for Texas, where we will stay with my wonderful cousin Peggy and her husband David, loved by women of all ages and stages. But we will go in stages, first to Alabama to see cousins and nieces and their families, then to New Orleans and finally Houston. GTT, as the 19th century Georgians used to write on their doors when they fled the aftermath of the Civil War. Wish us well, it's a long drive.
I thought I knew what it was to miss my mother. But I had no idea how much I would long for her, for someone who would love my children as much as I do. And for Daddy, who wanted to have only girl children and who ended up with three sons. How my parents would have loved Clara and Margaret!
Well, back to work, which is relentless, endless and mind-numbing. Love y'all.

Last Day of School

The First Day

They have picked out their clothes (within a few parameters, because they will be wearing uniforms to school. Khaki or navy skorts, white, pink or light blue polo or oxford shirts, plain, clothes toed shoes. Quite a shock for Clara, who wears these kind of crocks shoes, with open toes). They are supposed to ride a bus but weren't given a bus number, so today we will take them. I am making lunch in just a few minutes.
Margaret is in a class with a special ed teacher who will help her work on her handwriting and socialization issues. It's a collaborative class, meaning that Margaret will be in the same classroom as the other children, she'll just get extra help when she needs it. Clara is in another classroom. She was considered the model student by her pre-school teacher, so we will see how she does. Clara loves rules and loves enforcing them, and if the rules aren't stringent enough, she will make them so, especially where it concerns Margaret.
Much of the public school system in Athens, and probably in Georgia, seems very punitive to me. Codes of conduct to be signed. Information about good touch/bad touch (which seems good to me, actually). Notices about restraining children. School insurance (which seems like a scam). We had forms and more forms to sign. All risk-management related. I can't imagine how complicated it is to play an organized sport on a school team.
The school PTA seems very organized, so I plan to get involved with that as much as I can. Which may be a lot, given that I soon will have an entire day free. When the bus does start arriving, I expect it to get here around 6:30, which will mean they will be gone from then until 3 or 3:15. A very long day for someone who's five.
Recently, we went to a movie (their first!) in a local art house theatre, where the feature was an hour of Looney Tunes. Clara settled into her seat next to me, holding half a bag of popcorn and her doll. She snuggled up to me and said, "Now, this is my idea of a good time."
She's hilarious. I will miss being with them all day, but I am also relieved not to be with them all day.