Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Elementary Non-Conformists

Elementary Non-Conformists


           At conferences I learned that my twin boys were doing very well in music class. Both like to sing and they pay attention. They both get along well with all the kids and their teacher, too. However, the teacher has to tell Drew that he needs to be singing the same song as everyone else rather than just take off and sing his personal favorites by himself. Apparently it confuses the other children when Drew sings his own song while they are trying to sing what everyone else is singing. That's my boy, the non-conformist The teacher has struck a bargain with Drew that if he has a song he would like to sing that they will sing it but not at the same time as other song.

            My boys little boys were studying Abraham Lincoln at one point in their kindergarten year and had so many interesting things to tell me about him. He was a President. He was very tall. He wore a funny hat. He was from the same part of the country that we are from. He was nicknamed ’Honest Abe’ because of his reputation for being a good and truthful man. He was President during a war. He was shot and killed while watching a play. He was shot and killed because he was putting his face on coins. Whoa. Now I don’t know all there is to know about our great President Lincoln but I do know quite a bit about him and I’m really very sure that he was not killed for that reason. Adam was very sure that he was. We talked for quite a long time about it and neither of us was going to give. We consulted the internet for information but even with those facts staring us in the face my little boy was absolutely positive that Mr. Lincoln had angered people because he was running around putting his face on coins. I asked him if this made sense to him, that someone would kill another person because of their image on a coin? He shrugged as if to tell me that since he wasn’t the one who shot the President and that he doesn’t know why someone would do it but that they did it. We talked some more, I explained about slavery and that it was a great wrong that Mr. Lincoln had worked to end it and that this had greatly upset a good many people because this was part of their way of life and that politics are just confusing in general. He listened to my chatter but I knew he wasn’t going to budge. Thankfully the knowledge that Abraham Lincoln is one of the famous faces on Mount Rushmore had escaped his attention. If a man could be killed over something as small as a coin imagine the ramifications that having one’s face plastered across a mountain would bring. I know that Rushmore was after the time of Lincoln but so was the penny and I didn't have the strength to argue the point any longer. Little kids make for some interesting information, that is for sure.

 

            Drew was a handful of epic proportions when he was in preschool. I’m sure that my parenting techniques were questioned at length within the teacher's lounge. He would run away from teachers in the hallway and do his version of a cart wheel while leading them on a merry chase. He had hit a kid too hard with a ball at recess and when the recess monitors wanted to talk to him about it he ran and led them on a speedy tour of the playground. He didn’t do things out of meanness and that was agreed upon by all the staff but no one knew what his damage was. One day I was in my flowerbeds being quite domestic and splitting hostas when I got the call. From the principal. To tell me that Drew was serving a half-day in-school suspension. I had to have her repeat that for me. My four year-old was in her office serving suspension. I was in total shock. A preschooler? My preschooler? Suspended? Life at home was difficult for little Andrew for some time after that. No TV and no Wii constitutes cruel and unusual punishment I'm sure but that was what his sentence was. It was touch-and-go for a while there with Drew. I'm glad he pulled through.

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