A rant. Really, I’ve been thinking a lot, and writing
some, but I haven’t wanted to post anything I’ve ended up writing. You know that saying, “If you don’t have
anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”? Well, that might explain my radio
silence. Everything I’ve written lately
has been, well, not particularly positive.
We can partially
blame it on pregnancy hormones. #6 is
joining us in July! I cry every day. I get stress headaches every day. That’s just how this pregnancy is going.
And, this post
is no exception on the positivity front.
I have something to say about businesses that charge you an arm and a
leg and then try to tell you what to do, even though you are hiring them! (Don’t even get me started on doctors.) We have a sport and an extracurricular
activity (drama) that have both pulled this stunt recently. I know- private business, and they have the
right to run them any way they wish. But
it’s a good way to lose business. The
sport has a monopoly here, so you just deal with it or find a new sport,
right? But a coach did tell the kids
that he was trying to get the policy changed so that anyone who was late to
practice wasn’t allowed to practice that day.
Seriously? I pay YOU an
exorbitant amount of money every month (at least, that’s what my husband
says). You just do your job! Coach!
If he’s late, oh well. If he
doesn’t show up at all, don’t worry about it.
You still get paid. It’s not like
it’s a subsidized public school sport (where we paid, what, less than a hundred
dollars per season?). And, (dare I say
it), after all, it is just a sport.-My mother has been a piano teacher for years. If a kid didn't show up for a lesson (without arranging it beforehand), I don't think she ever once penalized them beyond, obviously, still charging for her time. It would have been infantile to tell them that they wouldn't be able to have a lesson that day because they were late. It's a waste of their own time and money, not hers. I love my reasonable mother.
The other
activity, drama, was an interesting and unexpected collision. One of my sons, the stubborn one, didn’t want
to do one of the activities during the two hour group class. He’s never been in public school, and this is
his first activity outside of the home with the exception of soccer. He hasn’t had too much interaction with other
adults being in charge of him. When he
has, there has often been a problem, including with family, so I guess I should have expected it. So, he didn’t want to do the activity, which
was dancing around like an idiot and chanting something. Hey, it’s part of what you do in drama. But I don’t blame him one bit. I would have stood there and refused to play
that kind of a game too. In fact, I
think I did: at Girl’s Camp, when I was much older. Same game too. Unfortunately, I was gone. I had to go pick out countertops for our
kitchen remodel (a whole nother story).
But when I came back, the teacher recounted the horribly embarrassing
story, telling me that he had refused to participate and that this is a total
participation class (why wasn’t that in the course description?!), and that my
son had caused quite the ruckus. Well, I
think it was the teacher who caused the ruckus, because if he had just
completely ignored my son when he didn’t want to participate there wouldn’t
have been any kind of a problem. But I
came to that conclusion only yesterday, and the class was two weeks ago. Talk about a slow response time. See, the teacher insisted that Teddy
participate. Well, if you’re going to do
that with that particular child you better have some pretty heavy ammo, like a
spanking up your sleeve or a hefty extra chore, and he didn’t. Well, he didn’t realize that he did, and
didn’t know to use it (getting kicked out of the course). Teddy ran out of the circle when the teacher
kept insisting, and the teacher tried to physically bring him back. That was a problem. That’s the child who doesn’t do well with
touch…as in, if you try to hug him when he didn’t initiate it you might get
slugged. So the teacher was telling me
what a disruptive child I had, that he had caused the teacher to be pulled away from the rest of the class and concentrate on trying to deal with him, and and that any further instances would result in his
being kicked out of the class. I, of
course, apologized profusely and reprimanded my child for not listening to the
adult in charge (before I knew what dumb game he had refused to play, and
before I had analyzed the situation). He
now understands that if he doesn’t listen to that teacher he won’t be allowed
to finish the class. So, mission
accomplished, right? (Come to think of it- I'm pretty sure my father would have done the same sort of thing, or mostly, just looked at the teacher like he was an idiot for expecting my Dad to act like an idiot, and possibly have slugged him if he tried to force him back into the circle. I-and Teddy- must get this from him!)
As I said, both of
these are private businesses and I support their right to run them as they see
fit. I probably won’t be doing drama
there again anyway. They picked a *gasp*
rap “song” as one of the showpieces for the end of the course, and I talked to
the teacher about whether my children could opt out of that particular “song”
for the performance as we don’t approve of any kind of rap in our home. He was a little stunned. No dice.
It would ruin the performance, but said that if I insisted they would scratch
it from the program and scramble to put something else in. And to let him know ASAP if they needed to do
that because it would be quite the job to patch it up. My sister was there. She told me not to be “THAT MOM.” The one everyone dreads when she walks into
the room because she objects to or has a problem with everything everyone else
views as normal. I really am that
mom. We’ll just deal with it this
time. But I’m getting an education, the
hard way, through experience, as usual.
I know to ask more questions, actually take advantage of the trial
classes before signing up for stuff (seriously, why do I not do that?!), and
review the content before committing.
Roll your eyes. It’s okay. But I invest a lot of time into teaching my
kids certain values and to support things that are contrary to those values is
kind of shooting myself in the foot. I
told my (concerned) kids we’d bite the bullet this time and just be more careful next
time- and to just do the song. They’ll be ecstatic not to see us
back next semester anyway, I’m sure.
