Goldenlicks, for lack of a better title

Today, I had my last elementary classes of the year, yay. It feels like a big accomplishment, and I’ve learned a lot along the way. (Mainly that 45 children is far too many for a foreign language class.)
We closed out the year by selecting and performing fairytale-type stories in groups. The children chose their own groups, and chose between one of five story adoptations, authored by yours truly of course. They practiced for a couple of lessons, and today was the performance (complete with simple props.)
I give you this background because I was surprised when a fight broke out in one of the groups over who would play Mama Bear from Goldilocks (whin co-worker kept referring to the play as Goldenlicks…) I mean, they could have chosen a play without gender specific roles (like The Three Billy Goats Gruff) or one I had done two versions of (The King’s/Queen’s New Clothes,) or they could have revised it to Papa Bear and Uncle Bear; it shouldn’t have been an issue.  But for whatever reason, these boys chose this particular play,  practiced it for a month, and starting crying over it TODAY.
Dealing with the boys and their fragile ego issues consumed me at the time, but now I’m more bothered by something else. 
What about all the girls in that class, who saw two boys literally come to blows and then dissolve into pouty tears for twenty minutes over having to play a fictional female role? This same role that they are born into.  Two teachers jumped in to talk to the boys, but what about the girls? What message does it send to them? Are we giving them any counter-messages to celebrate womanhood?

And what about me? Or you? We, who grew up at a time when people  threw around with abandon terms that equate being a woman with being fickle or silly or nonsensical or weak? How has that effected us? Are we damaged? Or has it, to the contrary, made us strong?

Somebody explain this….

Things have been really quiet on the blog lately. That’s what happens when real life gets busy, I guess.

I’ve started working more mornings now, three or even four, up from one or two last year. Then Holy moly Mary and Josephine somehow I ended up being PTA class rep AGAIN, this time for the fifth grade. As if there weren’t 25 other mothers (and 26 fathers) and an exponential number of grandparents who are better suited for this than me simply by virtue of being literate in Japanese. Or so I assume (granted HRH, judging by his tendency to eff up paperwork, is iffy.)

Of course none of these jobs are through the same organization. That would be too simple, too normal. What’s the fun in doing anything if it doesn’t make life more complicated? (That’s sarcasm, y’all, in case you were unsure. The only things I complicate on purpose are grammar structures.)

I leave at the same time as the children, or will be since one of my teaching gigs starts next month, two or three times a week. And-lo and behold- thus far those leaving-at-the-same-time mornings go much more smoothly than the other mornings.

What is up with that?

Thought having said it, and worse, written it down, I now need to knock on wood, cross my fingers, throw salt over my shoulder, and stick a needle in my eye. (Hope that covers it.)

In other news, both of the little shits boys who were aggravating Me First last year are in a different class. Hallelujah, praise the lord! His teacher is a hard ass, which is exactly what he needed. They had shuji (Japanese calligraphy) class the other day, and the teacher got onto him about not having cleaned his calligraphy set since the last class.

Me First wisely chose not to divulge the particular details of his shuji set cleaning habits (as in he has never once actually cleaned it.)

As soon as he came home, he went right into the bathroom and started washing all the bits and bobbles. I was holding my breath, thinking there was going to be permanent shuji ink all over my g.d. bathroom, but who’dathunkit, I bought him washable ink last year. So cleaning up his cleaning up was not as traumatic as I was expecting.

Yay, me.

Me Too is coughing and spluttering, hopefully it’s getting better. Another reason I haven’t been writing much is because we’ve been on the sickness merry-go-round and who wants to read about that? Heaven forbid someone Google “asthma” and it lead them here. Bless your heart, I cannot be of any help there besides to commiserate. It sucks. Well, I guess actually it rasps and wheezes. I’ll leave the puns at that.

I need a good sign-off to write here at the bottom…. Ideas?

Panic

Yesterday, I went to pick the kids up from after care at school. (I had been in a PTA meeting all afternoon.)

And they told me Me Too wasn’t there.

Where to even start? I was horrified. I was mortified. I was livid.

I trust these people with my children. It seems to me the very least they could do was ensure the children were where they were supposed to be.

Me First and I ran home, and thank god she was there on the landing. The poor little lamb had been waiting there for almost TWO HOURS.

There just are no words. The whole thing was beyond awful.

Psychodrama

So the little sh!t is in Me First’s class again this year. Even worse, they are in the same han, or group, and he’s up in Brother’s face all day long. He has been waiting downstairs every morning for my kids to come down, and walking to school with them.

I’ll admit a part of me was hoping this meant they were becoming friends. The two of them have been separated into a different class from the other boys in their posse, after all, so it wasn’t totally unreasonable that I-kun would latch onto Me First and actually not be an ass for, at least like half a day or something.

But this morning I overheard him telling Brother to run off and hide from Sister.

I performed an appropriate crazy-haired-gaijin-in-pajamas-screaming-bloody-murder scene from the landing, of course. But really, picking on a 1st grade girl is just beyond the border of what is even remotely acceptable in my universe.

So I-kun has a meet-the-lord moment coming next school day. I already have beginning of the school year parent-teacher conferences coming up soon. Whether to show up with the Emmet from Back to the Future hair or not is still under consideration.

In other troubling news, apparently Me First wrote someone a hate letter. Fortunately, he had enough sense not to sign it.

The recipient of this letter is the boy who, for the second term of second grade, used Me First as a punching bag. He also, sadly, seems to be a kid in need of special Ed type help that he isn’t getting. He asks inappropriate questions in class, refuses to sit down, etc., which results in the whole class losing their recess, things like that. He is mean to his classmates and hits them and kicks them, not seeming to understand that they are in pain or that his actions lead to his being disliked by, basically, everyone.

He also cries tender tears when he has to share something, or let someone else take turns being the leader. He really doesn’t seem to understand that everyone else should also have a turn. But then he bounces back in about .5 seconds, and starts punching people again.

Me First said he cried when he read the hate letter. And he feels bad about writing it and wants to apologize. But another kid who apologized for writing something mean on his desk got punched in the face for his trouble, so he was nervous about admitting he was the writer.

And then he got to the part where he told me that this incident happened three weeks ago.

So…. if it had been yesterday, I would have called the teacher and had Me First apologize. As it is? Part of me thinks having felt guilty about this for the past three weeks may be enough. I talked to Me Too about why he wrote the letter (he was angry because of something the other boy had said,) and how it made him feel when he saw how hurt the other kid was by it (bad.) Being mean to others doesn’t make our own pain go away. Usually, it just makes us feel worse.

For now, I’ve left it at that.

But… It really would have been nice to get through at least the first month of school without this kind of psychodrama.

Gaijin Stalker

I haven’t really written anything about Me Too starting school yet… I guess we’re still trying to figure our way around it. Most days she walks in the morning with her brother. If he’s being a punk ass (he’s nine, this happens at random, unpredictable intervals,) and I can manage to get ready in time, then I walk with her.

I’ve been picking her up in the afternoon. The kids only finish at the same time one day a week, and the other kids from our neighborhood are in the other first grade class. Plus the American in me still thinks it batshit crazy to have gaggles of giggling 6year olds walking home by themselves.

Today, for the first time, Me Too was walking with a friend when she came out of the school gates. I crossed the street with them, then told her I would meet her at home. I don’t want to cramp her style, after all. But she gave me a panicked look, and said it would be okay if I followed them. So I did.

That’s me, gaijin stalker.

Origin of the Sneezies

I forgot to blog about this with all the flu induced phlegmtasticness going on, sorry.

Two weeks ago, well actually like ten days ago, there was a PTA meeting at Me First’s school. For some reason that day, the classes were combined and the other teacher did ALL of the talking. Our class teacher, Y Sensei, just sat there, looking kind of pale.

The other third grade teacher is kind of….how can I put this nicely….dominant and overbearing. That may not have been exactly nice, but I have heard with my own ears this woman screaming at her class and calling them stupid. She calls the other class teacher by his first name. This is such a no-no in Japan, even if the other teacher does happen to be just out of college and gets mistaken for the local jr high school boys in the summer because his school biz black pants and short sleeves look a lot like their summer uniform. So her running the show like a bossy pants was not all that surprising.

You know me, I’m an underdog fan. I’m not a trained public school teacher, but I remember what it was like having my own preschool classes the first year. I imagine it must be at least a hundred times harder for him, having to deal with the school side of it and the parent side. In my limited, experience, the teaching itself is the easiest part of the job! I think Y Sensei got off to a bit of a rough start, what with announcing to the moms at the first parents’ meeting that this was the first one he had ever been to in his life. Didn’t exactly inspire confidence, if you know what I mean. He’s come a long way, though, and I won’t hear anything bad about him.

But then….
on the way home, I overheard two of the mothers in front of me saying that Y Sensei wasn’t looking so good; let’s hope it doesn’t spread it to the children. I asked them what they were talking about, and they said Y Sensei had come in late the day before with a 40C fever. He’d been to the doctor in the morning, had a flu test that came back negative, then gamaned the rest of the week at school.

Insert major eye roll

I won’t even begin to get into how the lack of dedicated sick days and the imagined burden on coworkers lead to this kind of behavior being a problem in Japan. I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves!

Friday: 2 students absent with flu
Monday: 3 students absent with flu
Wed: 5 students absent
the next Monday: 8 students absent
Tuesday-Thursday: 7 students absent (please note these are now all new cases.)
Friday: 8 students absent

And a phone call last night from a classmate whose son developed a high fever after school. So let’s see….9 kids sick on Friday alone, plus 5 from the week before, plus 2 from the week before that= 16 children out of a class of 24.

How many of these kids have babies or elderly relatives living with them? How many have underlying conditions, or live with people with underlying conditions?

When you are sick, STAY HOME. When people who work under you are sick, LET them stay home.

Y Sensei, I’m sure, will be having a hard time trying to get 2/3 of his class up to speed on their studies. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and hope he was influenced by bad advice or lack of knowledge regarding flu tests (which aren’t 100% accurate and have poor accuracy if you have had a fever for less than 24 hours,) and of course it is possible that the origin of this is not the sick teacher who was all up in their faces for three days with a high fever, but that feels like a stretch.

The other moms will tear him apart, poor lad.

But he won’t make the same mistake again.

The Obligatory Winter Vacation Homework Post

Winter vacation as a kid in the US involved a lot of staying up too late and eating too many sweets with people from the various churches my father pastored. He’d get lots of homemade sweets and, invariably, every year at least one giant tin of popcorn.

Winter vacation in Japan is… less vacationy. We have people over for Christmas (on which I let my kids stay home, rebel that I am.) We might go to one party at a friends’. But what really puts the damper on any fun one might have is homework.

It’s oppressive.

Not just because of the amount, which this year consists of 14 worksheets (2 per day,) reading, and caligraphy homework. It’s the fussiness of it all.

You just don’t do homework while lying on your bed, kicking your feet to the rhythms of New Kids on the Block while simultaneously admiring your new friendship bracelet. No, at the Hamakko house at least, it’s a big frickin’ production.

Today, Me First did his caligraphy homework with the PILs. He had three pieces of paper from school, with instructions to bring in the best one.

The in-laws start off by covering their table in newspaper (understandable,) then propping Me First up on several cushions until he is 3/4 inches higher than he was to start with. Then giving him a blanket. (?) After that, they made him practice several times before letting him use the paper he brought from school. Then coached him on approaching the blank paper with proper feeling. And some yelling about sitting up straight.

All in all, this particular fiasco cost an hour and a couple of tears.

And people wonder why I don’t get the Japanese relatives to help with homework…

Anticlimaxes, Twists, and Turns

Those of you who have been through something like this probably already know what happened this afternoon. Me First didn’t give the notebook to the teacher. He said he was worried that the other boys would get in trouble.

(~_~;)

That’s turning the other cheek and praying for your enemy all in one fell swoop, isn’t it? And this child has hardly ever set foot in a church. How did I do such a good job there? That’s children for you, isn’t it? We spend a good portion of our adult lives re-learning what comes to them naturally.

Anyway.

I had a talk with him, kind of similar to the cheating talk, actually, that when we let children get away with bullying behavior, they never learn that it is wrong. That leads to adult bullies, which leads to a)jail or b)a life without friends or love (I left out the other obvious result, c)a life of wealth and success unachievable by normal means.) We talked a little bit about why people become bullies, that they were bullied themselves or that they never learned aggressive behavior was wrong when they were small. Me Too very accurately pointed out a boy in her class who is on the verge of becoming one. Ouch. (She is right on, too.)

So, I think we had talked him into understanding why he had to tell the teacher.

He had a friend over this afternoon, and they spent a (weirdly) quiet afternoon playing with legos. Really, this kid needs to come over every day! I got so much work done while he was here. As soon as he left, Me Too awoke from her guest-induced lethargy and immediately destroyed the block creation they had been working on. Grrr. Luckily, I had dinner ready to distract them.

Then the phone rang.

I knew who it was before he announced himself. Not too many retirement age men call me. (Jiji prefers to have his wife call and yell at the phone over her shoulder.)

Apparently, someone else has notified the school on Me First’s behalf.

(I don’t know if it was Sparkly Mom or not.)

But, man, that has got things moving. Tomorrow, Me First’s teacher along with a couple of others are going to sit down with him and try to get to the bottom of exactly what is happening. The teacher came to me with the name of another child other than the usual suspects, so I suppose it will all come out. They want me to talk to him tonight and tell him that this will happen and that it’s okay to tell the truth.

It’s kind of easier for me this way, as now the school is in a 申し訳ない (apologetic) position to start with. I guess I need to keep on them to make sure the problem gets addressed properly.

Funny how that turned out.

Where’s the Devil?

We all know where the devil is, of course. In the details.

So what I have managed to get out of Me First in the past couple of days (and it hasn’t been easy) is this:

A) Three boys are kicking, punching, hitting him etc., when the teacher is not looking.

This may be hard to understand if you are in a country where kids are even remotely supervised, but kids here are left to their own devices a lot: break time between classes, when the class is moving to music class or English class, during lunch clean-up, etc.

B) Me First tried to tell the teacher on one occasion. His response was that he didn’t see what happened, he had the boys give their version of events (in front of each other) and apologize to each other. Me First didn’t tell me because he was made to feel that he was wrong (by apologizing.) After that he felt that the teacher wouldn’t listen. He is afraid the other boys will get him back if he tells.

I also have felt the teacher minimized my concerns on several occasions. (Does anyone else remember the ruler incident?)

C) Me First is not the only boy being hit or kicked, though he said he “gets it the most.”

D) At least one of the other boys is taunting him by calling him “gaikokujin” and “America-jin” in a mean way.

That last one is kind of the clincher for me. Hitting, kicking, stupid stuff like that? Boys do that shit. It isn’t nice to talk about, but they do. But the name calling and picking on someone who is “different” crosses another line, doesn’t it?

I heard this boy say this to Me First at the beginning of the year. (This kid has poor social skills, I think I think I mentioned before. Even 2nd graders should no better than to do stuff like that in front of the other kid’s mom, right?) Me First seemed to handle it well, explained calmly that he wasn’t actually “gaikokujin.” The other boy seemed to get bored and walked off. Me First didn’t get that the other boy was trying to be mean to him, so I let it slide. Perhaps I shouldn’t have.

Anyway, sorry to keep going round and round like this. I’m still trying to get my head around it, and steal myself against what I expect to be another minimizing reaction from the teacher. An absolute disgust tears through me when I think that this little boy, who I gave birth to and nursed and cuddled, have fretted over and laughed with, who has given me great joy and more than a few gray hairs, that other children think this boy is an object for their ridicule and abuse. And right now, just thinking about his teacher makes me feel sick to my stomach. He taught for 34 years. How many other children did he ignore?

But I’m being dramatic.

It doesn’t help matters that I feel like I’m being set up, again, to play the role of Hysterical Angry Foreign Woman, aka Kaya What’s-her-name and just about any other foreign woman on TV here. Even the “half-talent,” even the old ones, like Helen What’s-her-name who are over sixty and have never lived anywhere else, are presented that way.

Maybe I can work it in my favor.

(Sigh.)

Night, loves.

More About Sparkly Mom

After talking to HRH and another friend about what Sparkly Mom said, I’m kind of at a loss as to what to do next.

Sparkly Mom is kind of… different. Not as much as me, but we all know that in Japan different=bad. She brags a lot, doesn’t cloak her words in layers of niceties the way Japanese women are supposed to; her husband is seven years younger than her, a shotgun marriage resulting from a workplace fling when he was 19. While the rest of us are married to middle aged “salarymen” her husband is still in his twenties and h.o.t.

Anyway.

All of that combined, to a Japanese mind anyway, means the source is questionable.

But I think her definition of “bullying,” though out of touch with the more extreme version it would take most Japanese people to use the term ijime, is probably closer to the way we would define it in America.

Sparkly Mom’s son is both on the receiving end and an occasional perpetrator, according to Me First.

Whether she knows that, or would believe that, or not, I don’t know. I do know that she is not one to give much thought to doing things the usual way and has already talked to the teacher and the after care teacher.

So I think my first order of business is going to be collecting evidence, as it were. I’m writing a note in the Renrakucho, the official communication channel, that another mom has approached me with this information. I will ask the teacher to investigate, and also insist that the school guarantee my son is safe.

There should be no kicking or punching of any kind at school, full stop. Even done in play, I don’t care. If it happens again I don’t see how I can send him back.

I would really rather not homeschool an active eight-year-old, but I’m prepared to.

On Friday, after I’d talked to Sparkly Mom and spent most of the day in a daze, during which I had a parent/teacher conference with Sister’s teacher (who probably thinks I was high,) I took Me First for a make-up swimming lesson. Things seemed to really come together for him and he was able to kick his way across half the pool without a kickboard for the first time. It wasn’t pretty, but it was swimming. And he was ecstatic and so proud of himself! It was a moment, small but pure, and it gave me a lot of hope.

I don’t know what tomorrow will hold, much less next week or next year. But Me First’s spirit is far from broken. And we will keep kicking.