Dec 01 2008
Public School Broke My Kids
I don’t know how they did it, I just know that it happened.
This morning I sent off three well behaved, bright eyed, neatly groomed offspring to their respective schools. I kissed their ruddy cheeks, wished them a beautiful day, and watched them skip off toward the steel reinforced double doors of their public school education.
At some point during the day, something must have gone terribly, horribly wrong, because what was returned to me after dismissal were not the cherubic darlings I’d dispatched that morning, but some angry, gritty, whiny, mouthy replacements that looked and smelled like my kids but were possibly hardened ex-convicts or perhaps mental ward patients.
Seriously.
We had such an uneventful weekend. It was quiet, it was easy, it was unexpected. Maybe it was our approach - no responsibilities, no obligations, no expectations. We lazed, we ate, we joked, we watched TV. Now suddenly it’s Monday again and everyone is supposed to snap back in to submission, acquiesce to the strict constraints of time and authority. I guess it’s enough to make anyone hostile. They had their brief taste of freedom and of course they’re thirsty for more.
Who bears the brunt of their rebellion?
Why that’s Mom of course.
Because Dad is conveniently at work, and I am left with the chore of beating everyone in to submission. I’m sure he did it on purpose.
Should it take until almost 11 o’clock for a certain brood to finish the day’s homework assignments?
No, it shouldn’t.
I blame the school. For all their guidelines and curriculum and discipline…all that boring stuff that makes school such a drag.
Like my darling teen says, “I’d love school if it weren’t for all the learning.”
Yep, it’s gotta be the public schools.
