My son came home with a detention for forgetting his book in another class.
Okay, fine.
I’m not the teacher, but if there are punishments on kids for forgetting, I’ll just be thankful I”m not in school being policed or I’d be in trouble hourly!
The problem I had with the detention is that it was at 7:30AM. AM. Before school. Before my morning is complete. Before I pick up all the neighborhood kids for carpool.
Wait ….Mom is not headed for detention….why do I have to stress to rearange five other kids and my morning because one son has detention?
I was on a complaining rolling rant last night, “No…how is early morning detention going to prove anything? It’s just creating stess! Havoic! I”m calling the school! He can suffer a punishment during recess or lunch! Not screw with my morning!”
The husband suddenly stopped me and said, “Hey, this is good for him. Getting up a little earlier. It’s no problem fo rme. I’ll stay home from work and get him to school by 7:30am.”
“Oh….okay.” Ranting over. Problem solved.
This morning, my son woke up early, while the husband chose to sleep in an extra 10 minutes. My son came down at 6:50am and together we packed up his bag, got his ‘due-today’ science project ready by the door and even made his favorite egg breakfast!
At 7:15am, my son and I were both were milling about waiting for my husband, now in the shower to come down and take my son to school. At 7:20 totally ready to walk out the door, my son was still eating slowly knowing full well that my husband still had to pack up his work computer and make his own breakfast before they could leave the house.
Then, like a California tornado (that doesn’t exist, but if it did, it would sound similar to the noise coming from my own home this morning) the husband began yelling at my son that if my son woke up earlier they wouldn’t be late.
The husband then spouted off a few more comments that included, “I’m not taking you to school today! You need to call your teacher and tell her why you didn’t make it to detention!”
To say my 12 year old was devistated doesn’t even touch the emotions I played witness to coming out of my child.
But now, ‘Mom’ was back on the hook to call school and explain now (after the fact) why my child wasn’t at detention.
Going back to my original point: Detention shouldn’t inconvenience the parent, but the child that receives it. It should teach a lesson, so a child learns from it, so he won’t do it again.
Sadly all my son learned was: Don’t ask Dad to take you to school…ever.
I’m sure in a few hours the husband will realize he was the cause of this morning’s events and maybe even appologize to me or even agree with me that any detention causing parents stress or worry aren’t doing anyone any good.