Mother of the Year

Do you ever have days where things fall into place and your children behave better then you hoped for in whatever circumstance? When your kids say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ on cue and they comply with your every command? Yeah, that wasn’t my day at all.

We are now fully back into the routine of Tae Kwon Do. I feel confident I can get T.Puzzle onto the mat without much fuss. So far so good. However, once he is on the mat, he is out of my realm of threats and cajoling. That’s never been an issue before because in a normal class session, he complies beautifully for the instructor. Yeah, that wasn’t my day at all.

T.Puzzle is in his own world right from the get-go. He barely engages in anything the rest of the class is doing. He gets called out repeatedly to join in and doesn’t. He sort of stands there with a spacey look in his eyes. The instructor begins to take notice of how he is behaving. He gets in T.Puzzle’s face and says, “Hands over your head!” T.Puzzle won’t do it. “Hands over your head I said!” Nope, not happening. The instructor grabs his arms and places them over his head. The instructor calls out the next instruction. T.Puzzle refuses again. This time when he gets in T.Puzzle’s face and says, “Do what I ask of you, T.Puzzle.” He looks at him and says, “No.” T.Puzzle says ‘no’ over and over. My stomach drops to the floor. I’ve never seen any student ever tell the instructor ‘no’ and we’ve been attending for several months.

T.Puzzle is stripped of his belt and is forced to sit in time-out. The instructor says, “Get the diapers, someone’s acting like a baby (oh crap, who told!?! The instructor still erroneously believes T.Puzzle is potty-trained).  T.Puzzle proceeds to cry and all the surrounding parents turn their eyes to me. At that moment, I died a little inside.

I don’t know what was worse, the fact he openly disrespected authority or that several parents said, “How can you sit there? Isn’t your heart breaking for him?” Honestly, my heart wasn’t breaking. My kid acts like a nut all the time (his behavior, not him just to clarify) so this wasn’t shocking to me. The instructor handled it exactly how I handle T.Puzzle at home. It made me wonder, does no one else in the world put their kids in time-out even when the kid is crying like it’s the end of the world? Isn’t that sort of the point? Time-outs aren’t exactly Disney World, right?

Then, my humiliation grows. Prior to class I had filled out Full Speed’s behavior report. When I did it, I had no inkling that T.Puzzle’s behavior would be such a disaster. So, I filled it out honestly and gave him a couple ‘Fs’ (fair) because he keeps talking silly and in a disrespectful manner to adults that we encounter such as cashiers, nurses, and waitresses (etc.). The instructor reads his report, is angry (as he should be) and calls Full Speed out in front of everyone. He takes the report, crushes it into a ball and tosses it across the room. He says he expects better from Full Speed (and so do I).

In every other report that the instructor read, the kids had ‘Es’ (excellent) across the board. I’m supposed to believe that all the kids, and the oldest in class is only seven, acted like perfect angels every single day of the week? What. Ever.

I’m clearly feeling frustrated and wishing there was a wet bar in the parents’ corner. I can imagine perfectly where it would fit. The bar could be bamboo with a nice Tiki theme. There would be a fun, Tom Cruise-like bartender straight out of the movie ‘Cocktail’ who would wow everyone into distraction with his marvelous cocktail-making theatrics.

Instead I am left with two boys who couldn’t hold it together and a world of disappointment and embarrassment. Looks like ‘Mother of the Year’ is out of my reach again this year. That is unless there is a category for most alcoholic drinks imbibed by a Mom in a single day. On second thought, I better get my acceptance speech ready just in case.