guilt

Next week the Ubergoober will not go to camp and I could not feel guiltier about it.

Goober has been having some behavior troubles lately and decided to stop listening to the teachers. I couldn't figure out what was going on, because while he does have the selective hearing that all children and men seem to have, he was never a disobedient child per se. But every night when I went to pick him up, the teachers would tell me how bad he was.

As they talked to me, Goober would just look up at me with wide, fearful eyes.

So I did what every parent does. I talked with Goober about what was going on. He only responded that he didn't know. He didn't understand why the teachers were saying that. I asked if he'd done the things they had accused him of and, most of the time, he had. So I punished him appropriately. We took away his privileges, we made him write apology notes to his teachers and lectured him and talked with him until we were blue in the face.

Nothing worked.

On Wednesday, though, I got slapped in the face with the answer. When I picked Goober up, the teacher stopped me and told me how horrible he had been. So she threatened him. She told him that she was going to find out who his first grade teacher was going to be and she was going to e-mail her and tell her that he doesn't listen and what a problem he is.

I couldn't even speak I was so angry. I packed Goober out of there and didn't speak until we got out to the car. Goober was almost crying. He was shaking he was so scared. All the way to the archery shop, I told him it was okay. That the teacher couldn't do that. When we got to the shop, I told Nature Boy what was going on. He was even more angry than I was. We sat down with Goober and talked about some of the other things that were going on at camp. The teacher, who is one of four, apparently doesn't really watch the kids. She spends a lot of time on the computer, watching ball games and surfing the internet. The kids like to go over by her and watch with her, but she sends them away. We debated, but we decided to send him back to camp the next day. I would call the program supervisor and report the behavior. With any luck, they would take swift action.

So I called, he was horrified, but he was the program supervisor's supervisor, so he would talk to her and we would get this straightened out.

Only the supervisor, who was horrified, had to talk to the teacher first. But not to worry, she would not use my name. Everything would be completely anonymous.

Only the teacher guessed. And then the teacher proceded to tell the supervisor that Goober truly was a horror and, even though she shouldn't have threatened him like that, he was a problem at the camp. Which the supervisor believed because all of the teachers there were complaining about the children and all the behavior issues they were having. But Goober was a definite problem because he didn't come to camp until noon and the kids behaved until he got there. So he must be the problem. No, they didn't take into consideration that maybe the kids were picking on Goober because he had a different schedule or maybe because his social skills aren't as advanced as his reading skills. It was simple cause and effect.

Now I was beyond horrified. So was Nature Boy, but he was unsurprised.

"We're not taking him back there," he said. "He can come to work with me."

It would work. Nature Boy doesn't open the shop until 2 p.m. and Goober has his own desk and toys and books at the shop. I'm done with work between 4 and 5, so he'd only be there for a couple hours.

So I picked Goober up and got the usual litany of complaints from one of the other teachers. I endured it and packed him out of there and took him to a quiet park.

"Tell me what happened today," I said.

He did. When he got there at noon, he went over to play with some of the other boys. They wandered off into an area of the playground that they maybe shouldn't have gone to, but they had before and it was okay. This time, however, nightmare teacher didn't want them to go over there.

"I don't understand it. Everyone behaves until Goober gets here," she said. Right in front of Goober.

So he's not going back there. I'm trying to figure out how far I'm going to take my complaint, but for now I'm content just to have him out of there.

But I feel guilty. Horribly guilty. That I didn't see this when nightmare teacher was telling me how to run the newspaper. That I should have said something when she started lecturing Goober on the bible and taking the Lord's name in vain. That I should have spoken up the first few times they complained about his behavior. That I chose to send him to a place that thinks you can threaten kids and talk to them like that and think they're going to have any respect for you.

So this weekend we worked on letting the Goober have some fun, trying to undo the damage of several weeks of psychological torture. Friday I took him to the fair and let him play with the bunnies and fed him junk food for supper. Saturday we spent a lot of time talking about behavior and expectations and starting over. Today we took a nap and went to the pool.

And you know what? We only had two incidents of bad behavior. He listened to us, he was polite, he only needed a few reminders to bring his behavior back up to scratch. Kind of like any other soon-to-be first grader would need. It's like having my kid back.

Now we'll see how things go with Camp Daddy. I'm pretty sure it will be much better than what we had before.