Your kid is....

I guess my son's 1st grade class was treated to a puppet show by one of our high school service groups this afternoon.  If something involving anyone outside my son's class is going on, I always hear about it long before I get home, because people constantly feel the need to report on Kaden's behavior.  As 5th period started, one of my seniors walked in and announced, "Your kid is so hyperactive!"

I won't lie...it hit me all wrong.  I had to bite back my ascerbic retort and acknowledge the fact that, as a 17-year-old girl who has yet to become a mother, she would never understand how disheartening it is to hear comments like that about your child.  (This girl is a GREAT kid, and I love here dearly.  I know she didn't have bad intentions.)  Alas, I hear things like this constantly.  I'll be walking through Walmart and some random kid will come up and ask, "Are you Kaden's mom?"  When I respond in the affirmative, he inevitably tell me about how Kaden hit him or cussed in his class or got sent to the hall because he was misbehaving that day.  I've had other parents walk up to me at basketball games to tell me the myriad transgressions they witnessed while volunteering in Kaden's class or picking their kid up early from school.  "Wow," they'll say in their amused tone, laughing because they think since we have kids in the same grade, somehow we're sharing the same experiences.  "He sure has a hard time sitting still and keeping his hands to himself!"

Yeah?  Well your kid is ugly and reads like a robot.

I find myself wondering if other parents are barraged by constant negative feedback about their children.  How big is their stack of e-mails from the school reporting behaviors from sleepiness to spitting to kicking the principal and screaming the f-word in the lunch line.  I wonder how often other parents receive bad behavior reports from kids at their child's school or strangers in the supermarket.  How many times have other parents had to rearrange their day to pick up their misbehaving 1st grader because he's on his "third strike" and is getting sent home from school.  How many other parents wonder if it's possible to get expelled from the first grade?

I wish I could sit here and pretend to be thick-skinned and tell you it doesn't really bother me.  But it does.  Every parent knows how a bad remark about your kid can alter your confidence.  Anyone who knows me will tell you the opinions of others matter WAY too much to me, and being Kaden's mom has been a humbling experience in oh, so many ways. 

Thankfully, in the end, I get to see the Kaden that doesn't usually show up at school.  When there aren't 27 people in a room fidgeting and breathing and talking and moving around and people are asking him to read this and write that and sit still and listen and look here, Kaden is actually a delightful young man.  He is smart, he reads very well, he loves science, and he's as articulate as an English teacher's son should be.  He has manners, and he is very loving.  If no one else in this world understands Kaden, Dan and I do.  My family does.  I suppose in the long run, that's all that really matters and what everyone else thinks is irrelevant.