Was that over the top? I never can tell….

I don’t know if you can see it clearly in this picture, but above the USA imprint–the leather pouch says C 4.  One letter. One number. It’s imprinted on a cute little leather pouch my son, Morgan, got to make at a school camp he went to earlier this week.

It might has well have said “I have a bomb and I’m going to use it”–because that is how he was treated for about half of his school day today.  A teacher saw that he had put the imprint C 4 on his pouch and asked him why he put it there? He explained that C 4 is his favorite bomb–he apparently even asked her what her favorite bomb was.  Now, this teacher tells me that what he said was “I’m building a bomb”.  Either way–she was alarmed by his words and so he was reported to his school office.  I don’t blame her–she was just doing what is required.

My 11 year old son is NOT the next Unabomber. He is not violent in any way. Yes–he LOVES action movies and super heroes. Yes–he loves acting out scenes he sees in the movies. And yes–he loves to talk about all these things to whomever will bother to listen. Heck–we even encourage his love of action at home. Right before school started up this year we did a special “Spy Mission” for our boys (it’s something we’ve done for years) in which we sent them on a secret mission to Super Rockstar’s office where they had to discover where a “bad guy” had hidden a “bomb”. When they found the “bomb”, they had to defuse it with only moments to spare. It was a awesome–they totally got into it.

So why does our school system now dictate that if certain “hot button” words are used that instead of asking questions and using logic–our teachers are required to follow the worst case scenario? In Morgan’s case–if he did in fact say “I’m building a bomb”–wouldn’t it make more sense for the teacher to ask some probing questions like: “Oh really? How are you going to do that?”(seriously–if he is capable of building a bomb out of some leather scraps with a zipper we should be getting him into MIT–he’s a freakin genius) or “what do you plan to do with the bomb you are building?”  She would have quickly discovered that, no, he wasn’t really trying to build a bomb.  Of course not.  He was pretending.  He was inviting her into his imagination. To him–bombs are cool. He’s a boy.  Boys love the idea of exploding things–even if they never get a chance to. (just watch any action movie with Super Rockstar–he will rewind and watch any explosion in slo mo over and over)

But, because of all the atrocities that have happened in schools over the past couple of decades any mention of, picture drawn, or conversation had– that uses words(or images) that a teacher or fellow student finds threatening in any way is required to be reported immediately and includes a half day trip to the principals office, a sit down with two or more adults questioning him on why he would use such language, and assessing if he is a credible threat.  It was all very confusing and very upsetting to him and to me.

It’s a bit like trying to hold back the wind to keep most boys from talking about weapons and war and it’s a fools errand to try to muzzle their enthusiasm over it.  So what are we to do then? Do we just try to scare our children into not speaking certain words so they don’t end up on some sort of “watch list”?  Do we just endure watching our kids who have slipped up and spoken the wrong words go through the humiliation of being treated like a criminal?  Is that really the only way to keep our kids in schools safe?

Unfortunately that’s the world we live in.  It’s so sad to me that an entire generation of boys and girls are under intense scrutiny because of the horrific events that have happened in schools over the past couple of decades–events that have sent parents and school staff reeling.  Every day I send my boys to school I fear the worst.  It just shouldn’t be that way.

At the end of the day–it was another hard lesson learned. It was an opportunity to explain to him the importance of paying attention to the words he uses. He didn’t mean to do anything wrong.  But, in todays world–it doesn’t really matter what your intentions are.  All that seems to matter is what you say.