Goin' In (part 4)

I put him to work as soon as we got home.  The only trouble is that it was also the first day that Rachel, my teenage "mommy's helper" reported for work.  She is pretty and has long hair, so of course Griffin is smitten with her.  And in 6.75 year old boy speak that means a lot of annoying and teasing.  In 39 year old mom speak it sounds like this:

"Griffin, get busy...If you don't get moving, son, you are really going to get it...Griffin, what are you supposed to be doing?...Leave her alone and finish up...I have another job for you...I told you to stay out of here..."

Poor Rachel,  I think.  She probably wonders, I am sure, just what she had gotten herself into.  So I say, "I'm not usually such an ogre mom.  He just had a really bad day at school, and he's in quite a bit of trouble."

"Yeah, when I told him he'd better listen to you or he was going to get in trouble, he said it was okay; he couldn't get in any more trouble," she said, not knowing that single phrase entered my ear and shattered my brain.

Oh, really? 

Every teacher knows that there are some children who must be compelled to humility, ala Annie Sullivan wrestling a willful Helen Keller all over the dining room until she would consent to eat using silverware.  Mae Carden, a teacher and education innovator summed it up by saying, "Sometimes it is necessary to make a student cry."  Looks as though Griffin and I, two willful souls, were preparing to wrestle, and someone was going to come away crying.  I'm not saying it will be him, but I can assure you it won't be me.

Later, when it is just he and I in the kitchen, I say, "Rachel said you told her you didn't think you could get in any more trouble.  Is that right?"

He simply shrugs.

"Griff, you need to know that I love you, but there are only two things I am required to do.  I have to keep you alive and teach you about God; the rest is extra.  Soccer?  Extra.  Wrestling camp?  Extra.  TV, computer time, sleepovers, play dates?  Extra, extra, extra, extra.  You don't think you can get more in trouble?  If you want to keep going, you might just end up with a mattress on the floor, one blanket and two pairs of clothes, 'cause everything else is extra.  You getting me here?  'Cause I love you, but if you want to keep misbehaving, you will see just how much trouble you can get in."

I know...I know.  Griffin is not yet 7, but I also know that Griffin will one day be 14. And while I know that there are many worse things than minor misbehavior at school, those are exactly why this fight is particularly important.  As my mother said, fighting the good fight right now is like drawing a fire line around them for their own good.

But it's enough work to make me sweat!

(to be continued...for the last time...)