Whenever the school system has a mass communication for all of the students' parents, they record it, and then their system automatically calls all of the parents so that everyone can just answer their phones and hear the recorded announcement. For example, a day or so ago, they had called all the students' parents with a recording to inform them of the road work going on around the square in town, and advise everyone that if they went a certain way to take their kids to school the following morning, that they may want to take a detour around the construction.
Anyway. I always got sick of answering the phone with the normal "Hello?" as if the recording was an actual person, so silly me began answering the phone by sticking my tongue out and blowing the biggest raspberry I could possibly muster into the phone every time the automatic school recording would call. You see, I don't believe that the school recording will even start to play until it thinks that someone is actually on the line. So you have to say "Hello" or make some kind of noise, or something.
So this afternoon, I was sitting at the bus stop waiting for Lilly, when my cell phone rings. I look at who's calling, see it's the school, and answer the phone with an ultra-robust "PPPPFFFFFFFFFFHHHHHHHHTTTTTTTT"!!!
To my absolute horror, the recording that I expected did not begin to play; instead, the Assistant Principal personally said "Hello?!?", to which I snapped out of it, of course pretended like nothing had happened, and replied in my best 'Perfect Mother' voice with a proper "Hello" fit for the Queen.
I was MORTIFIED. But thankfully, the Assistant Principal didn't mention it, so I guess I got away with it. WHEW.
Needless to say, immediately after I hung up, I changed the contact information on my cell phone for the school to say "Recording" whenever I'm sure it's actually the recording, and "School" whenever it's an actual human being school employee calling. Sheesh! :/
Anyway, the reason that the Assistant Principal was calling me in the first place was to let me know that Lilly's school bus driver had complained to them about Lilly's behavior on the bus the day before. Apparently Lilly was changing seats way too much and being "rowdy". Lilly's explanation for changing seats too much was because she was only helping a friend who had accidentally dropped and scattered all over the bus floor a whole bunch of little polished rocks that she'd gotten from a gift shop as souvenirs from her trip to the beach, and Lilly was going around all over the bus floor (along with several other little girls) helping to find them and pick them all back up for her. Lilly told this to the Assistant Principal, and the Principal basically told Lilly that if something like that happens, don't worry about the rocks; just stay in your seat to be safe. The Assistant Principal also told Lilly that if the bus was in an accident, and Lilly wasn't sitting upright in her seat, that she could go crashing through the window. (Yeah, right, but whatever).
I can understand their concern for safety (or secret motive not to get sued), but crap like this makes me kind of hate the way school is nowadays. School has only been in session for 12 days now, and already, Lilly has had four notes from the teacher sent home (two for not paying attention in math --which she hates because she has tremendous difficulty with-- one for not doing her homework and "not being honest" about it, and one from a substitute teacher because Lilly didn't ask permission before going to the restroom --which is something that Lilly says that her regular teacher allows the students to do), one verbal threat from the teacher to have a parent-teacher conference with me about her doing so badly in math, and now I get this call from the Assistant Principal that Lilly's being "rowdy" on the bus. Really?!? I can understand why many more parents are choosing to home-school their kids than ever before. Not that I would necessarily ever do that, but I can see why it's becoming a more popular choice. Sheesh. Dealing with school BS is the worst.
Anyway, Lilly does happen to be a complete hellion at home, so I'm starting to wonder if her hellion-like ways are finally beginning to extend to school. Before, she was always awful at home, but an angel at school. Whenever I'd tell anybody about it, they'd just tell me to be glad; that it's better for your kid to misbehave at home than at school. But then I got to figuring that if a kid was great at school, but awful at home, then it had to be because the parenting skills of the parents were cruddy. Not to mention that I've never actually been around other kids Lilly's age long enough to actually observe them and know what's normal kid behavior, and what's not, so I don't really know how a kid her age is supposed to act. But it seems to me that most kids do act better than Lilly.
I'd been starting to kick around the idea of maybe taking Lilly to her pediatrician and talking about the behavior problems, but I just have a feeling that her doctor wouldn't believe me, or would tell me all she needs is extra rest and a freaky diet, or refer me to some scary psychiatrist 100 miles away for a million tests or something, only to be told that Lilly is fine; it's just your parenting skills that suck.
So today I just so happened to go to lunch with some friends from my old workplace, and they asked me how Lilly was doing. I told them about her notes home from school, her trouble in math, and her misbehavior, and then we got on the subject that maybe she needed medication. Then one of my friends remembered that years ago, a lady she knew had a son who had troubles like that, and tried all kinds of different prescription medications, only to eventually discover that the best thing that helped him was a simple herbal supplement called Calm Child from the vitamin/herb/supplement store.
Intrigued about this, I went to the herb store later, and they had some. They had it in liquid form, or tablets to swallow. I opted for tablets, because even though the liquid form claimed "great taste", you know that's always hit or miss, and kids usually think that any kind of "medicine" is "yucky" anyway, no matter how secretly OK and candy-ish it actually tastes.
Here's a picture of the bottle:
Anyway, when we got home from Lilly's gymnastics class a little while ago, I made Lilly take the tablets, so we'll see what happens. Fingers crossed that it'll work!
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