Nexus

Today started out so hopeful...ice on the windshield, coffee in hand, kid on a field trip...

My son was left behind at the school while his entire class went on a field trip. They claim he never brought in a permission slip. There was also no notice in advance of this problem, no note home, no note in his homework notebook which the teacher looks in and signs every day. I'm nearly positive I sent it in weeks ago. So what did they do about it? They sent him to sit with first grade all day. He's in third.

So he got brought to me at work, earlier than I usually pick him up, because the other mom was picking up her kids and grabbed mine, too, since he'd had a wasted day. She was a parent/guardian on the trip (a kid-corraller) and didn't realize he'd been left behind until they were too far gone to change anything.

And I can't shake the feeling that the teacher didn't want him on the trip. He can be a handful and a half sometimes.

I checked his folder and notebook. No notes. No messages. Nothing.

Except some homework assignments due this week. That aren't even started.

We spent about an hour this afternoon, after coming home from work, with him in my lap crying. he'd had a bad day. We went round and round about when was he going to get his work done if he went to swimming this week, since it's the last week of swimming this session, and finally I let him go.

Where he jumped into the pool, when he wasn't supposed to, and landed on a girl's face.

Hard enough that she had to leave the pool.

Then I find out that this wasn't the first time he's hurt somebody during practice. No one had told me. The mother promised she'd pray for me.

Then he got into a fight with some other boys in the locker room after practice. Twice I sent random dads waiting in the hallway in there to kick him out. I banged on the door (it was locked) and he finally came out. Why were you in there so long? I asked, pretending I didn't already know. I took a long shower he told me.

Do I look that stupid??

My kid is the bully, isn't he? My son is turning into the child that every mother dreads, the one who gets labeled as a "problem" and the mother pitied or scorned as unable or unwilling to control her child.

One of the new IT guys at works calls me Nexus, because if there's a problem, eventually he'll find me in the middle of it. The Nexus.

I'm beginning to believe it.