…Very long story
short, the Circle of Concerns came to a screeching halt that day. That was not our intent. But, in fact, the principal had NOT been
aware of the practice and was none too pleased that this teacher had chosen to
keep her students indoors while the other first graders were at recess. There were no cross words spoken that
day. But, the way the
teacher carried herself and responded to her supervisor, in front of us,
created, in me, a general distrust. Throughout
the next several months, I made myself
available for homeroom stuff and each time I came away with the sense that she
was stuck in a job that she really did not relish.
Imagine my unease
when one day our son came home with a permission slip for a field trip…to
HOUSTON. Unable to go as a chaperon, I worked
myself into a dither imagining my son in her care…would she allow
the frustrations of any trip with children to cloud her judgment? Would she watch after him as I would?
Absolutely not! I was deathly afraid of
her watching after my child on a field trip that far from
home. The only answer was to keep him
home that day. And that’s what I did.
The next day, I was
presented with a dilemma. Being the rule
follower that I was, I knew I had to provide the school an excuse for his
absence. What would I write? As I discussed this with my husband, I failed
to notice the two big ears that were tuned in like radar to our conversation.
My husband ever the pragmatist, said, “Just say we kept him
home because we did not want him to go on the field trip.”
I answered back, “Then his teacher will know for sure we
don’t trust her.”
He said, “We don’t.”
I said, “I know, but I don’t want her to know it. I think that I will just say we kept him home
because he had a temperature.”
“So you would rather tell a lie?” he asked.
“He did have a temperature!” I shot back. “It was 98.6”
With a roll of his
eyes, I knew he wasn’t in favor, but he left for work with no further protest.
Excuse in hand, I
dropped my son off at school and headed back home to begin my day. Errands run, and housework begun the dilemma
of what to write on his excuse was taken care of -- my mind was a million miles
away. So the phone call from the school
caught me by surprise. It was the nurse
calling to say that my precious one had gotten sick to his stomach and had
thrown up. Rushing to the school with concern for his well-being, the “little
white lie” I had told was forgotten until I pulled open the front door. In the foyer, I was confronted with a sight
that sent cold chills down my spine.
I had developed a
highly sensitive radar that signaled that something was about to come out of
his mouth. (Need I remind you of this
boy’s proclivity to ‘big talk’?) Red lights were flashing and buzzers were
going off in my head. Quickly, I
surveyed the situation and ran through the options that came to mind. Too
far away to scoop him up like a football and race for the door-- out of earshot—without
looking like a complete nutcase, I soaked up the scene. There he stood with his sweet little arms
crossed standing in the midst of the principal, his reading teacher, and the
school nurse. As I drew near and
attempted to speak with the ladies, he, very confidently, put his hands on his
hips and quipped, “That’s what you get for lying to my teacher.”
Awkward. Now how do you recover from that? Being the super mom that I was, I very
quickly took my leave from the ladies, knowing full well, they needed the
opportunity to guffaw at what had just happened. Like any loving mother, I reached out and put
my arm around him and began to move him toward the front door. What was unseen to those behind us, was the
fact that I actually had him in a ‘vulcan death grip’. Amazingly, he was rendered silent. As the doors to the school closed behind us,
I bent down and spoke gently into his ear.
“Do you see that
house there across the street?”
He nodded in the affirmative.
I whispered, “You had better be thankful that we do not live
there. As it stands, I will have time to
cool off before we get home…otherwise, if we lived in that house across the
street, I would blister your behind before we got in the front door.”
It was then that I
recognized the ‘death grip’ on my own heart. I was upset with my first grader
for calling me out on a lie. Even though
my motive was pure, I was wrong.
Scripture says that “out the mouths of babes you have ordained
praise”. In that moment, “conviction of
wrongdoing” proceeded from the mouth of my own “babe”.
Humiliation
and conviction together are almost too much! It was enough to stop me in my
tracks and prevent me from following through with my very viable threat. We did have an earnest conversation
concerning his mouth, and I reminded him, again, that he was indeed only 7
years old. 21 years later the whole
incident is relayed as one of many Personal Moments of Parental Failure. I shall never forget that day and the lesson
that I learned…truly honesty is ALWAYS the best policy.
