Like you might have gathered from my August 20th and October 22nd posts (‘He’ll be a President‘ and ‘Mesopotamia‘), there were recurrent misunderstandings between my darling little boy and his teachers. One day I was told, again, by one of his grade school teachers that the boy was fast as a bullet but interested in everything except the standard required school proceedings. I called his father at the office and unleashed my frustration about his son‘s shortcomings, and the fact that I and I only had to keep dealing with the teacher’s many grumbles! My husband understood my pain, or most probably just wanted to shut me up, and left everything at the office to rush home and have a serious talk with his first borne once and for all! Only…when he got home he found his son head to head with his mom at the kitchen table; after her kid had told her his side of the story, mom was soothingly stating something of the sort, ‘don’t fret Topino (little mouse), lively brains are most often misunderstood…’ Obviously, the teacher did not understand the intrigued ways of my kid’s tireless curiosity and the Lioness, always extremely protective, was sweetly reassuring her Cub‘s sensitivity! To this day my husband reminds me of the unbelievably maddening scene he found in the kitchen after leaving his busy day at work behind in a hurry, and of the fact that he wasn’t sure who to strangle first, his boy or his wife!

Fun Fact:

When I complained with my mother in law about her grandson‘s school shortcomings she rolled her eyes telling me that she was called by my husband’s teachers every other week all the way up to the 12th grade. Every week she would try and guess the teacher of which subject she would have the pleasure to confer with. My husband eventually proceeded to complete college in 2 and 1/2 years and went to Warthon for a master where, btw, our little bundle of apprehension was born.

Reflections:

I often say to my successful son that many of the lines on my face have little to do with age; we truly appreciated (and still do!) his out of the box personality but it certainly contributed to his parents’… seasoning. On the other hand, probably because of the lack of brute pressures in our Italian upbringing, our kids enjoyed their childhood to the fullest. They are cosmopolitan, well rounded kids who have chosen to do what they loved and did it well, not simply for a college application. Children are robbed of an already short childhood in order to get into this or that university; by the time they graduate high school they already are worn-out by the constant pressure to outdo themselves and the fact that they didn’t enjoy the carefree childhood they should have been entitled to. I was appalled when, while still living in the City, my husband too was required to participate to our toddler’s interview for next year’s nursery school! Oh, he got in, but we thankfully then moved to suburbia. I have always believed that a name school, especially nowadays, doesn’t vouch for the wit of a kid’s brain or the capability to deal with the rest of the world once that kid gets out of the school’s protective walls. And it is plainly obvious in real life!