Since the school season started my daughter has come home each day announcing that she hates school. She has always hated school just like her brother did and pretty much like I did. So this news that she reports each day after school is not news to me and I pretty much ignore it.

She wants to be home schooled but I don’t have the patience or the knowledge to do something like that. I like that she goes away for 6 1/2 hours five days a week. It gives me a little time to think and work.

I may have mentioned this before but for new people, my daughter talks a lot.

A lot.

This is not hyperbole, she really talks non-stop and even in her sleep. It becomes white noise for those of us who live with her but for her teacher, and apparently other students, not so much.

One little girl told her to shut up recently.

My daughter was crushed by this.

I don’t know why, I tell her to do just that all the time, though maybe using different words.

This same little girl, who told her to shut up, has also been making fun of my daughter’s middle name.

Her middle name happens to be Rose. I don’t see what is so funny about that name. Daughter bathes regularly and does not smell bad.

For the week or so that this child was making fun of my daughter’s middle name, I suggested that she ignore the ignorant child, who obviously has limited ability to come up with a better way to tease her. Daughter’s last name is funny and it would be very easy to make fun of it. It lends itself to all kinds of horrible rhymes and frankly this child, who is making fun of her middle name, has little imagination.

The ignoring thing worked for a little while but apparently everyone has their breaking point and my daughter, who also happens to be a redhead and who happens to be raised by me, has hers. She reached it Friday afternoon.

My daughter, the mini Redhead Ranting, put her fingers in her ears, wiggled them, and stuck her tongue out at this little girl. Prior to that she made fun of the little girl’s first name by repeating it over and over again. Let me just say this little girl has a funny name and if you say it over and over again it is not only funny but also annoying, especially if it happens to be your name. This little girl has one of those names that is normal except for the extra syllables her parents added to the front and back of her name.

Daughter got busted by the teacher, the very teacher who was peeved that Daughter stuck her tongue out in the class picture.

What is worse, for the daughter, is that the little girl was not making fun of Daughter’s name just before the tongue sticking out and name repeating happened. Nope. It’s been at least a week since she bothered to torment my child by making fun of the name Rose.

So daughter had no excuse for her behavior. She had been festering about the name-making-fun-of for a whole week before she decided to give this child a taste of her own medicine.

Taste of her own medicine is something to remember.

So, I pick the daughter up from school and I can see as she is walking towards me that something is wrong. She has the crinkled up look on her face that means tears are possibly moments away.

“What’s wrong?” I ask her.

“I have a note from my teacher” She says, rather flatly.

Great.

“What did you do?”

“I was doing something that I shouldn’t have done but the teacher didn’t see everything and she said I did stuff that I did but only because she did it to me before I did it to her and I was sick of it and it was time she had a taste of her own medicine” She blurted out.

I’m already laughing. And I am already thinking about the call to her father about the taste of her own medicine aspect of this transgression.

“Am I grounded?” She asks.

“We’ll talk about it after I see the note.”

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The box on the left shows the inappropriate behavior, the box on the right shows what daughter should have done. According to my daughter she should have stood (without feet) with a group of rather bored and unresponsive children rather than have fun by sticking her tongue out at a rather unresponsive child.

I’d have thought that the child with the Mohawk would have sported a smile but even he is bored.

As you can see I have not filled in my portion of the note that is to be returned to school tomorrow. We had a funeral today so she and I got one extra day to think about what she did.

I am torn between this Fix It Plan

Maddie and I have discussed this rather unfortunate episode and I can assure you that something like this will not happen again.

and this one:

Maddie and I have discussed that she should not tease “child” about her weird name when “child” has not recently made fun of Maddie’s name. I have told her that she should only make fun of “child’s” name when “child” is making fun of Maddie’s name because otherwise you will send stupid notes like this one home.

Which do you think is the appropriate response?

I did not ground Daughter. I couldn’t, I was too busy laughing about the note. When I managed to catch my breath I suggested that she not call other children names if they had not recently, within the last two minutes, called her a name. I told her I didn’t want her to get in trouble over stupid things such as this, that there would be plenty of opportunity for her to get into trouble when she got older and she should not waste notes from the teacher on this sort of thing. I gave her a pass this time but the next time I told her I would not be so nice about it.

When I talked to her dad I mentioned that she had given another child a taste of her own medicine, knowing that this was out of his mouth. I was still laughing about the whole thing so he knew he wasn’t in trouble and ‘fessed up about the situation and how he had suggested that this child needed to be taught a lesson. Not from our daughter, he assured me, but from someone, eventually.

Whatever.

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