The Sneaky One

The Sneaky One

There were three wishes that we had for the first week of school:

1. The kids would actually be able to find their classrooms and subsequently be able to tell us which classroom they were in (it’s been a long summer….)
2. The kids would wake up before the first bell rings at school and at least have one eye propped up ready for learning
3. We would avoid at all costs any trips to the principal’s office, calls from the school counselor, calls from any of their teachers – in other words, good reports for all of the kids!

I suppose two out three isn’t so bad, is it?

It’s true, our last wish did not come true, perhaps we did not wish hard enough, or a more likely scenario we did not emphasize that seeing the principal so early in the school year is not necessarily a good thing.

There are many descriptions we’ve used for Max – if he was our first, he’d be our only; he’s ‘high-spirited’, he’s Dave’s son and not mine (really….), etc. And now we add one more moniker to him, The Escape Artist. By virtue of his new name, you can surmise the flurry of activity that lead to the dreaded phone call:

“Hi, this is Max’s teacher. We had an incident today.” Crap…we’re only on day four of school, couldn’t he at least get through the first week? “Well, as we were going to breakfast, we realized that we were missing Max. We immediately called the office and started a search for Max.” Great, now the principal knows that she has to keep an eye out for the sneaky one…I was hoping, as usual, to skate by the year flying under the radar, not above it. Thanks Max. “It turns out he left via the fire escape door and was found outside in the playground. A parent found him and brought him to the office.” Well, you have to give the kid some credit for knowing the playground is at least more fun than cafeteria food.

And that, my friends completed our first week of school. Dave and I quickly arm wrestled for who was going to get the ‘opportunity’ to pick up Max and steer him in the right direction of life, and at least directionally back to the inside of school, not outside. So Dave did as any good father would do – talked about life lessons of staying in school, the streets are a mean ugly place for a four-year old all over a hearty breakfast in the Loop. After all, he was outside freaking out the teachers while the rest of the kids ate their cereal, he was hungry. I know what you’re thinking, because frankly I’m thinking the same thing, ‘you rewarded his actions with breakfast?’ This small piece of information was not discovered until days later, apparently in the ‘don’t tell mommy’ category. Why is this important – well, if you acted up and your parents came and fed you breakfast, you just might think that was a good thing, not a bad thing. Parenting 101 – don’t encourage bad behavior by rewarding with a nice treat like breakfast.

Fast forward to yesterday, also known as “Day 5” of school:

“Hi, this is Max’s teacher, we had another incident today.” Why, oh why can’t my incidents be the ‘he wet his pants and had an accident and we don’t have a change of underwear at school? “We sat down to journal” umm…he’s four, what is he going to journal about…”and Max did not want to journal. He apparently didn’t want anyone else to journal either as he began to take their journals away and became very disruptive.” Apparently, so disruptive that the security guard and school counselor was called…on a four-year old.

And so we have learned the hard way that Dave’s son, also known as Max, is not just sneaky, he’s sneaky smart. I have also learned from my mother-in-law that Dave was the exact same way at this age, so I am genetically not responsible for his behavior….unless he’s sweet, loving, cute and funny. Then I take full credit! We are crossing our fingers that we end this week on a high note and I can stop my walk of shame to his classroom as other moms point their fingers mumbling under their breath, “Oh, there’s Max’s mom.” I’m thinking of putting in our application for ‘Super Nanny’ and see if she can herd cats or tame the wild child named Max. Our precious, beautiful, wonderful son Max who is never-hardly-some-of-time-ok-a-lot-of-the-time-Dave’s-son a little mischievous, a little naughty, but awfully cute and lovable.