winkgirl4's Diaryland Diary

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Justin is really close to getting his first spanking in a VERY long time. I don't think that I have spanked him in, maybe, five years. When people ask me why I don't spank, my answer is honest: I don't because I don't really need to. Let me correct that statement: I don't need to spank Justin. Justin is a pleaser. Ninety percent of the time he is the most compliant kid around. The other ten percent you can find him lost in space- having completely forgotten what it was he was supposed to be doing. That includes eating his dinner, cleaning his room, doing his studies or rinsing the shampoo out of his hair while in the shower. And he's smart. Smarter than I would like, really. You see, that part of him that drifts away forces him to utilize the part of him that is clever- and, lately, he's had to be very clever. It used to be that he could drift off in class and then, at the last second, he could wisk through his work and still get A's but his teacher, this year, won't tolerate the drifting. More than once, I've been called into his class to be lectured on how I must control this behavior and how his ability to do his lessons after a days worth of daydreaming is catching up with him. And I agree. I don't want him daydreaming. I want him learning. I don't want him to miss those little gems of information that can often slip into even the most mundane of lessons. But he's a drifter and he does.

And so it is that I received a letter from the principal. Okay, let me correct that statement, too: so it is that I received a phone call from my son, while at school, informing me that he has been placed in detention and he had been sent home with a note the day prior, informing me of such and, as I had failed to sign the note, the principal would like to discuss the matter with me. The principal proceeds to explains that Justin was in detention because he failed to return his "Thursday Folder". His Thursday Folder, by the way, is the folder that comes home every (you guessed it) Thursday with the graded papers and projects from that week. And it was this folder that he had, absent-mindedly, misplaced and failed to return- warranting his afternoon detention and could I, please, talk to Justin (now, on the phone. Now, while I'm sitting at my desk at work.) Could I please lecture Justin on the err of misplacing his folder.

They failed to understand why I was not upset about the forgotten folder but was, rather, livid about his failing to (choosing not to) give me the note he knew would get him in trouble. Not long after that, I received a note IN the eventually-found Thursday folder saying that she had sent several things home with him that he has failed to show me and failed to return.

You can imagine that I was angry. I grounded him for a month and have told him that he will be spanked if I receive another such note. And I hate this. I hate feeling like it's come to this and that I will have to deliver if he does (and likely will) give into the cleverness that he feels will keep me from find out that he's drifted off, again. It's at times like this that I really hate being a parent.

7:18 p.m. - March 25, 2005

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