annieology

The Teacher and I don’t exactly see eye to eye on my parenting of the littles.  It started last year over Felpsy’s inappropriate footwear and has bled into this year.  She felt it was my responsibility to teach him about proper footwear, which I agree with, however, she has never parented a RADish before.  I explained to her that once he sensed any disapproval on her part that he would triangulate us to death.  Which he did.  I feel her stance on it was that I am a mean and horrible foster parent who wouldn’t even purchase shoes for this sweet adorable four year old foster kid.  As you can imagine it ended up being an all out war on footwear at our home, ending only when the  therapist informed the teacher that she was HARMING his emotional development.

This year, it has been the same with the twins, although instead of coming to me with her problems, she goes to everyone else hoping that I “get the message” somehow.  Luckily I have good friends who understand that people who haven’t watched this process unfold for the past five years probably won’t get all of it.

Anyway, this morning….

Boog was drawing on the white board.  He told me to look at his letter.  To me it appeared to be a backwards, lowercase j.  And I said “Boog, that’s a great J.”

She, stopped mid sentence speaking to another mother, told me that that was not a J because the “hook would go the other way.”

Really?  The hook goes the other way on the j – I had no frickin clue.

She went on to inform me that it was a lowercase I and they had not studied the letter J yet and she hoped I hadn’t “set him back”.  Instead of arguing with her over the fact that it wasn’t a lowercase I because I’s don’t have a hook at all.  I just left without saying a word.

At which point I was stopped by the room mom taking donations for the teachers gifts for Christmas and promptly handed over $15 to the cause without another thought.

Because I’m the bigger person.  Except not.

I did it without thinking.  Only later did I become totally pissed at myself for doing so.  I would not choose to chip in for a card for this lady.  She subverts my parenting on every occasion, even though it’s been explained to her by people with letters after their names, that my kids are not “normal” and while she may not get it, are being parented to the ability that I have and that the state allows.

RAD parenting is different than Parent’s Magazine parenting.  The littles and I have not always had that bond.  As far as they know, when I leave I won’t come back.  If they can push me away, then our relationship is resolved on their terms.  Whether it was prenatal exposure or multiple moves or the fact that Felpsy required a disproportionate amount of my time and attention.  These kids are broken in a way that cannot be seen.  Of course we are working on it.  Of course it gets better day by day.  But every time you undermine my authority with these kids, you are hurting them, not me.  I could care less about your ignorant opinions.  I’m sure your blog is filled with stories about rotten parents, mainly me and my ignorance as to which way the j hook goes, just keep in mind that people are AMAZED at the progress that Felpsy has made in our home.  That progress made possible by the incomparable Tech Support and Mrs. Awesome.  That progress was not due to sticker charts and time outs.  We prescribed the problem.  We chose our battles, and in reality, we lasted “just one more day” more times than not.  That may not be ideal, but without our efforts Felpsy would be just another foster child somewhere, but because we chose to make him ours, we get to decide exactly how it is we want to ruin him.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 6:15 am and is filed under Fostering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.