When Your Mask Slipped

First day of school!! No matter what those words mean for you (elation, ala the old Staples Back To School ad), or sadness that they’re leaving … either way, they’re momentous, for both parent and child. It’s a huge change, all new everything: teacher, classmates, environment, expectations. It’s so much more than the Back To School Bus Stop pictures flooding everyone’s Facebook feeds around the end of August/beginning of September.

For the record, I don’t think school should start in New England before Labor Day.

Facebook has this cool feature called On This Day, where you can see what you posted on this date 1 year ago, 2 years ago, 3 years ago, etc. I love seeing the pictures of my kids doing all the fun things we’ve always done. Sometimes, though, I see a stark reminder of the abusive, toxic, sick place I was in, and the people who intentionally held me there.

Today was one of those days. My On This Day showed me a picture from 4 years ago of my youngest (4 at the time) standing in front of a homemade cake. The caption was that my oldest (13 at the time) baked it for her brother (10 at the time) for his first day of school. Let me give you a little context for the enormity of this day … my 10 year old son had his first day of public school EVER, having been home schooled his entire life until that day. So, he wasn’t just having a first day of school. He was going to public school in 5th grade in a new town for the first time in his life.

In my mind, this called for a ticker tape parade. In his father’s mind? He opted to go out for a First Day of School Celebration with his girlfriend and her two children for their 1st day of school. This was not their first day of school ever. This was not a new town on top of that. For them, this was just another first day. They were not and are not his children … but his own children? They’ve been consistently pushed aside for his girlfriend’s children, and this night was no exception.

First I was told that the girlfriend’s daughter wanted a special First Day of School night out. Then it was “just her, her mom, her brother, and … my husband and my children’s father.” (check the rest of my blog for the crap I put up with while my husband cheated on me with my former friend) This “dinner out” lasted hours longer than any dinner with children. Did I mention with children? School is out at 3. They were out WITH THE CHILDREN until 10 pm. I messaged continuously throughout the night about: my kids missing their father, it being a school night, and when to plan for their arrival. I was lied to all night long.

My son, when he asked where his father was and I told him, turned to me with the innocence he was always known for (I use the word was because his father’s behavior has jaded him in the last few years … ), and said “But doesn’t Dad know it’s my first day of school too? My first day of school ever???”

My heart shattered for him in that moment. I think I might still have some pieces to pick up. My daughter (age 13, still home schooled at the time) happened to be in the room when he said that. Her face contorted into a mixture of fury and desperate sadness for her brother. And then it coalesced into a drive: she took it upon herself to bake her brother a cake to celebrate his first day of school, all herself. She frosted it and everything. When I came into the kitchen she said “He should get something special too – it’s his first day of school EVER!! And he should have been included!!”

I’m not entirely sure the fury from that day ever left her.

I’m also desperately proud of her integrity and love for her family.

We enjoyed the cake as a family, sans their father who had better things to do (an omen for the future), and I put the children to bed. When their father finally stumbled home, it was half in the bag, the girlfriend worse, carrying travel mugs of tequila … WITH her children. Her son took me aside and asked why his mom and my husband were acting so strange at “dinner.” (The adults only had margaritas, no food. I guess it wasn’t enough after $100 worth of booze at the restaurant because they hit up the liquor store after). I tried to laugh it off to her son, but I think he knew. His mom was at that moment trying to log onto his student account and gyrating on the chair while laughing with my husband who was responding … while her kids watched in horror.

I steered everyone upstairs and tried to put people to bed. I was told I was a wet blanket (for being the only responsible adult in the house taking care of innocent children’s minds) and laughed at by the other adults. And the next morning I was told “I don’t remember anything from last night.”

That’s ok. I do. So do your children. Ask me again about the first day of school? About you being a parent? Ask me about the wounds inflicted on my children by you.

Ask me. I dare you.

Classrooms

Is a classroom really the most ideal way to learn?

I ask this as a … well, a few-years-out-of-school-age woman who is currently stuck in a classroom EIGHT.HOURS.A.DAY in training for my new job. My new part time job. Information is given to the class as a whole, then the group practices/asks questions on it, and then we take a test.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I had the entire job learned by about Day 3 of the FOUR WEEK training class. But I digress.

What is the plan when you’re in a classroom setting, and you’ve already digested and assimilated the information? That’s the problem. There is no plan. You may be ahead of the class, bored to tears, but yet you’re trapped in this room surrounded by people. Minutes – no, seconds – tick by so slowly.

This is what we’re doing to our children.

When did we all decide this was the most advantageous way to pass knowledge to our little ones? I understand that it’s the most efficient way to pass information to a group of people but …

I don’t know about you, but when I have a desire to learn something, I seek out that knowledge. I hunger for it, and I devour it, and I don’t stop until I’ve read everything I can about it. It doesn’t have to be forced; heck, you’d have to force me to STOP learning. Time passes in the blink of an eye, and it’s enjoyable.

How does this measure up to the mind numbing boredom of classroom learning?

It doesn’t.

Classrooms are sometimes akin to being in prison. You are a slave to the speed – or lack thereof – of the class as a whole. What happens if you learn whatever is being taught ahead of everyone else? You’re stuck sitting there. You count the seconds, fidget, try to stay awake, take copious bathroom breaks, wishing you were ANYWHERE but there … wait, what does that sound like?

Oh yeah. It sounds like the majority of kids that people are putting on medications because they can’t sit still in class. But I digress again … or do I?

I’m not saying the classroom should be completely done away with. But, can we accommodate for those who finish early? Can we allow for people to move ahead, move slower, learn at their own pace, as the INDIVIDUALS we all are?

ANYTHING is better than being stuck in a chair, stuck in a room, screaming inside, counting the seconds until you’re sprung from prison. I was just given a huge reminder of that.

P.S. If anyone wants to come rescue me, I have class again tomorrow.