Basically, the short version of a very long story is that Kade came home on a Thursday afternoon and was super duper hungry. That afternoon an evening he ate a ton of food (as in like an entire small can of cinnamon rolls that we had for dinner!). So as I was unloading his lunchbox to repack it for Friday, I noticed that all of his food that I had sent that day was still in there. When I asked him what was going on...why he didn't eat any of his lunch...he told me that he had forgotten his lunch in his bookbag and that the teachers didn’t allow him to go back to the Preschool building to get it. So, naturally, I asked if he ate any lunch at all that day. He said that one of the teachers made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich…and that he ate that. When I asked what else he ate, he said, nothing since he didn’t like the rest of the items that they were serving that day.
So the child that usually eats all of the following: a PBJ sandwich, chips, cheese, graham crackers, carrots, applesauce, juice box, and fruit snacks (and he woud buy at least one milk)…only ate a PBJ that day. To say that I was alittle mad would be an understatement. But, wanting to give the teachers the benefit of the doubt, I went into Kade’s school the next morning with an open mind.
I stopped the first teacher that I saw and asked her what was up with Kade’s lunch the day before. She told me that she didn’t know what went on…and that I would need to ask Mrs. M. So I did just that. Went over to her and asked what was up with Kade’s lunch the day before. She told me that Kade had forgotten to get it out of his bookbag…and that he didn’t tell anyone that it was in his bookbag until they got over to the lunchroom…and so in order to teach him a lesson, they didn’t allow him to return to the classroom to get his lunch. Then she went on to say that “the lunch yesterday was so good, though…it was hamburgers, and potatoes, corn…” That is when I interrupted her and told her that Kade didn’t eat any of that. Then she said, “well, I mean, we just made him a PBJ.” By that time I had heard enough…and I pretty much layed into her…making her well aware that withholding food from a child is no way to “teach him a lesson” and that them not taking 5 minutes to take Kade back to the classroom to get his lunch was unacceptable and cruel.
I then left the building, furious that my child had gone hungry the day before. I got into the car and called Caton. We agreed that the principal needed to know what was going on. So I called the Principal, leaving a message for her to call me back.
She did, the next day and I simply told her what had happened and how unhappy it had made me. Then I told her that she could take it all with a grain of salt due to the fact that we were NOT going to enroll Kade in Kindergarten. Once she found that out…the tone of the conversation changed VERY quickly. She wanted to know if she could sit with Caton and I to have the opportunity to change our minds.
Eventually, after the beginning of the next week, and Kade’s teacher acting VERY immature – not speaking to me in the pick-up line, asking other parents why they were friends with me, and even getting right in my face and sarcastically saying, “Good Morning!”, I agreed to sit with this teacher to try to “talk things out.”
To say that I went in with my “dukes up” would be a very accurate statement. This teacher tried to blame everyone around her for what happened with Kade…it was Mrs. K’s fault for not noticing that he didn’t have his lunch, they were short-staffed so no one could go back to the classroom with Kade…she even tried to blame it on Kade saying that he stood in the “buy your lunch line” instead of the “have your lunch line.”
She cried saying that in all of her years of teaching, she had never had any of these kinds of problems with parents. But her tears were lost on me…so she quickly dried those up. When I asked her what she would have done if she would have left her lunch in the classroom…she said that she would have come back over to the classroom and eaten her lunch there. She then tried to say that Kade was just a bad kid…so I asked why we hadn’t gotten ANY information home saying that he was misbehaving. She just said that they didn’t want to be annoying. (Ummm, hello, my child’s behavior at school is hardly annoying!!!)
Then when I called her out for getting in my face…she didn’t have much else to say. She just kept saying, “I cant believe this is all over a PBJ!”
Finally I got up from the table and said, “We are just going to have to agree to disagree on that one…it is so much more than a PBJ…more than you obviously understand.” And I left.
That was Friday the 6th…Kade hasn’t been back. And I do hate it for him because he had to miss all of the “Graduation” ceremonies and all of the fun “End of the Year” stuff…but Caton and I just couldn’t continue to send him there knowing how that teacher was treating me. We couldn’t be assured that they weren’t treating Kade badly.
And next year, Kade will be attending one of the public schools here in town. Caton and I toured it…and it is phenomenal. Because Caton and I both went to Catholic school from K-12..the decision for us to NOT put our child in Catholic school was a huge one! One that we DID NOT take lightly. But with everything that has happened this year…and capping it off with this incident…we feel that Kade will be in a much better atmosphere next year.
And we will take the summer to decompress, relax, and revamp for Kindergarten…with new friends, new teachers, and a new school.
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