Okay, so I've got some issues with my son that I've really got to get to the
bottom of, and I guess I'm a bit stumped on what to do with it all.  My son's
been getting in trouble more and more lately, primarily in his afterschool
program.  He's hated that program for a very long time.  At first I thought it
was primarily because it was cutting into his videogame time, but I'm really
starting to think that there's a lot more going on there than I was aware of.
  Unfortunately he's ended up falling in with some of the more dirty mouthed
and trouble prone kids in the school there.  I think it's probably because they
move around a lot, and when the kids were looking for new friends he ended up
finding them due to the fact that everybody else already had a bunch of friends
from previous years at that school.  I can't very well expect him to finish the
school year without any friends, so I'm trying to help teach him to make the
right choices when those friends are doing things that'll get others in
trouble.  I think he's been doing pretty well with it, all things considered,
but there may be some bias going on with the staff there, as well.  I don't
know if it's some form of racism or another bias (my son being half African),
but whatever it is I think I'm going to have to go talk to the school about it.
  One of the first things that happened is that somebody left a purse with
money in it laying around at the school and he, plus one of his friends (whom I
really don't trust) ended up being around it at one point.  When somebody found
out that there was missing cash from there, they ended up looking for clues
from the class as to where it went.  Turns out that most of the class fingered
my son and his friend about it.  I trust my son for the most part, but I don't
know if maybe his friend did something and took that money (I really don't
trust the kid or his mom-- the kid alone is a bucket of unending lies to try to
have something interesting to say); or maybe he did get my son to try taking
something...  It's so hard to know for sure.
  After that, I ended up going in to pick him up one afternoon and showed up
right at the same time that one of the staff who I think might have a bit of a
grudge against my son was pulling him and two of his friends out of class in
order to 'make them stop being so negative.'  She was literally shaking with
rage, and the kids were all telling stories about how she'd pushed one of them.
I don't know what happened with that, due to not being there to see it, but I
do know that whenever you've got somebody in charge of others who is shaking
with rage like that that something bad happened and could easily have triggered
her into some inappropriate actions, too.  She had just sat them down to write
some sentence about being negative 100 times, but I was picking him up at the
same time.  I ended up grounding him for that one, primarily because I knew
that something bad had happened, and I figured it was as good of a time as any
to try to make sure that my son is steering clear of others' negative behavior,
even if it is funny or amusing at the time.  Seems to have worked well here.
  Yesterday, though, when I got back from work, I heard a pretty disturbing
tale of my son being accused of 'sexually harassing' some of the girls in his
class.  Now this little bit is really taking the cake, because I'm 95% sure
that my son has problems talking to girls about most things, and he's hyper
aware of his actions when he's around them.  It turns out that him and some of
his friends were discussing male genitalia and semen for some reason, and it
sounds like that was the primary cause that they got in trouble.  Now while I
can understand that perhaps the topic wasn't appropriate for a school
environment (though I personally don't believe that myself-- it's a school,
kids are learning, and kids will talk), I don't think that telling a kid that
it's a legal offense that could get them thrown into juvenile hall is the best
way to deal with something like that.  It got even worse when I checked my
voicemail last night and ended up finding out that one of the other parents had
been around when it actually happened, and _she_ was calling me because she saw
the instructor/supervisor there deal with things in an inappropriate manner,
not the kids.
  Now this isn't the first time that I've had to deal with crap from this
school.  I think that the truth of the matter here is that there are true
aspects all around, and improper dealings with things all around, as well.  The
difference being, of course, that the adults in the situation that are dealing
with things inappropriately are serving as role models, and need to learn to
keep their emotions under control when dealing with children that are supposed
to be looking up to them.  I think that my son has fallen in with some bad
apples, and at the same time he's going through such a rough and stressful few
years that he's almost certainly acting out some on his own.  I've certainly
seen bits of it here, as our domestic situation has failed to improve in any
way.  Unfortunately work only makes dealing with this crap harder.
  So now I have the decision about how far involved I'm going to get with all
of this again.  Even if my son _is_ guilty of all of this stuff, I don't think
that it was handled appropriately.  I've had to go and head off a bunch of this
junk before, last year, when the lunch staff was harassing him in front of a
bunch of other kids because of a paperwork error that had his free lunches
tallying up money due incorrectly.  Ugh.  I really just don't want to have to
deal with this crap, but alas, I cannot let my little man deal with all of this
without properly finding out what's going on here.
  Gah.  I've got more that I was going to write but I'm frustrated enough
already from having to think about this so much for now.  I'll probably be
writing more on this as it develops.  There's actually some other issues that I
need to write about, too.  Not this early in the morning, though.  ;)
  Hope y'all are doing well.

  -D
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