What do you do when someone makes your kid cry? And that someone is a teacher? The Baby Hulk earned his nickname due to his explosive temper. He isn’t as bad as he used to be, but he can still throw a fit in seconds flat, scream-cry at the top of his lungs for seemingly no reason and be an all round pain. But he is my pain and basically just like nobody can talk about my parents, nobody can talk bad about the Baby Hulk.

He has been taking swim lessons since mid-September and in my opinion is pretty decent. The swim teacher disagrees. He is on his ass like BH is training for the three year old Olympics. We had a bad week at the beginning of the summer, but seemed to really improve after that one week. This week he has been bending his knees way too much when he kicks, a new habit, and the teacher is trying to make him stop. Here is the problem: you tell BH to do something, you literally have to ask him three to four times before he responds. Do I like it? Not one bit. It usually results in raised voices, times outs and sometimes crying on his part. Clearly swim coach wasn’t in the mood for that this week so Baby Hulk wasn’t allowed to go on the slide and tower at the end of class on Thursday. Then he started wailing. There had already been some questionable moves at his Wednesday class so I was livid to see my baby crying.

I threw the other kids in the car so I could rescue the BH from his teacher, then proceeded to let him know how pissed I was. I didn’t yell or anything, but I did stop him from starting his next class on time and lecture him on my child. He thinks the BH can do the work and isn’t trying. I was ready to move him to another class or stop lessons for a bit, but BH doesn’t want to change teachers. And this kid will tell you the truth. He has no problems telling us which babysitters he likes and doesn’t like.

I talked to Lance who reminded me how long it takes for us to get BH to clean up or look for his toys. He wasn’t mad about BH not getting to go down the slide. He doesn’t want someone badgering our kid, but he doesn’t mind a reasonable consequence. And quite frankly, BH cries quite a bit so how was this any different besides someone else making him cry.

I was so upset that I didn’t realize what had made me so mad about the entire incident. It was the singling out in front of others. They used to do that shit to Squirt in elementary school during lunch. He has ADHD and wasn’t able to control some of his behavior so he was always in trouble. Plus, he had a teacher I hated who always had him sitting at a table by himself. Once my mom went for grandparents day, and they had to sit alone to eat lunch. BUT that still didn’t count for his lunch detention.

I hate the kind of shit that only serves to make a kid feel like a loser in front of other kids. Some parents don’t care about that stuff and some kids aren’t affected by it. I do. I have no problem (mostly) with anyone giving a reasonable consequence to my kids, but this I won’t allow. My kids may drive me batty at times, and I am so very far from being the mother they deserve, BUT, I can promise that I will never allow someone to eff with them. EVER.