Can I honestly say it’s been a good week this week? No I cannot. Is it better than last week? Yes, yes it is. So that is something. If you come back tomorrow you can see Anger Issues: Part 2 and if you are raising a daughter, you won’t want to miss it.
I need to pour my heart out.
I am angry. I am angry that Nico is going to be 15 in less than a month and I am STILL arguing with teachers about letting him go to the bathroom. He is still being made to feel embarrassed by people I entrust him to. Let me be clear. His classroom teachers have been wonderful in high school. Almost all of them have been supportive. I don’t know what it is with gym teachers and Nico (with the exception of his last semester gym teacher who treated this issue like it is…not a big deal). Is it because he is an athlete and they think he is slacking? Do they expect him to go full force in practice and in gym? Probably. I mean it is high school P.E. It’s the class that is going to catapult him into Yale or Harvard. So taking three minutes to pee is really going to be a detriment to his grade and his future career plans. I don’t shout from the rooftops all that I am proud of with Nico but he does not use CF to get out of homework. He does not use it to go to school late because he is EXHAUSTED from school, practice, homework and then treatments on top of it. He wants NO special treatment. ALL he wants is to be able to quietly go to the bathroom when he needs to which unfortunately is often. He is getting mostly A’s and a few B’s and I have not heard ONE complaint about him abusing his permanent bathroom pass. Why, then do some teachers decide to give him a hard time about it???
Nico told me not having a 504 plan is better. He likes it better this way. If I thought he’d need it for more than just him going to the bathroom when he needs to, I’d push for it but he doesn’t. HE IS DOING FINE! We are blessed beyond belief that he is as healthy as he is and that it doesn’t interfere so don’t you agree that it would be ridiculous to have an education plan in place to pee? I sat in more meetings in junior high about my son being able to go to the bathroom that it was laughable. It was infuriating that with all that the schools and teachers have to do and worry about, some teachers get hung up on giving my son a hard time about going to the flipping bathroom.
His gym teachers constantly think he is using it as an excuse to get out of doing what they are doing. They see it as him being disrespectful. He’s getting an A in this class so obviously he isn’t missing that much of the class. I feel bad for him because when the teacher asked him after taking 3 minutes to pee if he thought he could just go to the bathroom anytime he wanted, Nico, knowing that he has the permanent pass that says he can said yes thinking his teacher knew. His teacher took that as back talk and told him to see him after school. Nico doesn’t get in trouble often so was upset the rest of the day, texting me telling me. I emailed the teacher (yes, I was one of “those”) and told him about the pass and said that if he felt Nico was disrespectful in any way, I’d have him apologize. He answered sounding like someone who exerted authority because he can and that Nico was avoiding the track (if Nico had done what the teacher wanted him to do, which was to go back and tell the teacher that he had to go to the bathroom and then go back to where he was in the first place, it would have taken 10 minutes instead of 3, so was he really avoiding the track?). That set off the Mama Bear in me. I said the same thing I said here and when Nico went to see him, he told him to not do it again. What was the point of that? So, he almost misses his bus home for this teacher to give him a hard time about peeing only to tell him, just don’t do it again?
Just let the kid go to the bathroom in peace! Jeez! Am I really STILL having this discussion this late in the game??
What do you think? How would you have handled it? Would you have been a Mama Bear (come out swinging) or a Mama Ostrich (head in the sand)?
You know what else adds to anger issues? Feedburner saying I lost all 78 of my subscribers. Why, Feedburner, just why?
I am a stay at home mom, married to my college sweetheart, Leo. We have four kids, Nico, Tommy, Isabella and Gia. We have a son, Rocco that is an angel in Heaven.
