Tough luck

A 4 year old boy was recently expelled from my daughter’s class in KG -1. The school was forced to take this drastic step against the child as he was continually disrupting the class. But what was more defeating in all of this is the fact the parents were in denial that their child could such a thing.

The problem started right from the very beginning of the class in September. The boy would bite his fellow classmates and occasionally push or kick them too. Smera too was bitten and we asked her to complain to the class teacher instantly. A month into the class this continued, so I spoke to the academic supervisor regarding the matter was asked to send a written complaint. The supervisor was asked to prove that the child really was biting by his parents. Forced to provide proof to the parents, she decided to urge parents to send in written complaints.

At first I refused to give in a written complaint. I wanted to give the boy a fair chance as I was not sure if Smera was exaggerating. As a mother I could understand another mother’s situation too. It is difficult to hear when our child does something wrong and I am really no one to judge about the little boy’s character. So as days passed on, Smera continued to grumble until one day when she came back home with a bite mark on her wrist.  And that was it, I didn't want Smera to think that it is okay to bite. So I finally sent an email to the supervisor, explaining the incident and hoping that this time the parents would not ignore the incident.

After the email, I very rarely heard Smera complaining about her friend. Though she would tell me of how her other classmates were bitten by the same boy. And then just this week I was informed by the supervisor that the boy has been expelled from school. The reason cited was that the boy was given plenty of chances to improve and the school no longer wanted to be held responsible for anything untoward happening to other students.

We were not the only parents who had complained. But did the school do right by putting the child out of the school? In my opinion, maybe not! The child of course every child needs to know the difference between good and bad, right and wrong but not all children are the same. I think it was a very harsh decision on a 4 year old. Maybe they could have waited for few months for the year to get over, this way the child would have saved an academic year. I am sure the parents could have helped a bit more to help their child deal with his aggressive behaviour.

Discipline cannot be taught overnight and definitely not by punishing the child. What we must remember is that every child is different and a child needs our love the most particularly when he is not worthy of it!  

Old habits die hard

Can you believe it January has almost come to an end? What is it with time that stops for no one or anything for that matter? I have been thinking of posting something for the last few weeks and then got busy with life. To be honest I am really glad that 2014 is over, had been a tough year at many levels. That explains why I was keener on 2015 to get started, but time seems to be rushing and I am yet to catch up with it this year.

I have carried on my old habits like laziness into this year too. Not just that in fact I have attained new heights in being lazy already in 2015. Just yesterday Smera came in from school with her school bag all messed up courtesy her lunch box. The bag had to be cleaned up and somebody (i.e. me) had to do the job, so gave my washing machine a golden chance to be my savior. 30 mins later not only the bag was clean, my washing machine survived my experiment (sporting a proud grin).

Now that I have confessed of washing the school bag in the machine, let me also share that I wash little Smera’s shoes too in the machine. Actually I go to the ridiculous extent of buying only those kinds of shoes that can be machine washed. To explain better these shoes do not come with washing machine friendly label, but I have attained this wisdom through my trial and error methodology (yet again sporting the proud grin).

Strange things happen to nice people. It continues to haunt my life in 2015 too. It is quite to keep track of the number of times that I got into trouble for bizarre reasons. After feeling proud about my accomplishment yesterday, I decided to help myself to nice cup of chamomile tea. And just before bed I stopped to have my daily dose of multivitamins. One of them is a big capsule and just as I put that in mouth, I heard Smera crying in her sleep, so I quickly downed the medicine with a small sip of water and ran to the bedroom.  She was alright and it just the dream, I switched off the bed to realise, something was stuck in my throat. In my rush I took little to have medicine and that thing was stuck in my throat. Went back to the kitchen had lots of water, the feeling got a little better however it didn't go away completely.

Source:corbisimages.com

Suddenly memories of biology class flooded my thought and made think how to get rid of the silly capsule stuck in esophagus. Remember esophagus, a thin tube connecting the mouth to the stomach? Yes that was hurting.  Then I remembered of rice, somebody once told me when something like this happens or a fish bone gets stuck, fill your mouth with a large ball of this rice and swallow it. Hoping the rice takes the capsule down my pipeline, I ended up eating an entire bowl of rice to feel better. With no choice I retired to bed thinking of blogging about this.

And as I got up this morning I was feeling much better and the discomfort was gone. Just then I decided to finish up my morning chore and sat down write this post.  I guess strange things will continue to happen this year too! Who knew that a dirty school and a capsule could inspire me to write my 2015’s first blog post. Wishing you all a very late but a real happy new year!