What I'd Like to Say--Wish I Could Say--To My Daughter's New Teacher

There comes a point somewhere into the summer when a mom hears "What are we doing today?" or "Where are we going today?" one too many times.  Gets nagged out, and with one twitching eye, one thread of a nerve and zero sanity left, she begins counting the days until the start of school.  Being the mom of an only child sometimes moves that point a bit sooner into the summer break.

For me, that point happened quite a ways back.

And then it hit me this afternoon.  My heart's about put on brand new clothes, throw her book bag over her shoulder and walk out the door and into the classroom of someone I don't know.  It happens every year...and every year, that point of counting down days is replaced with the tear-tugging silent prayer of just about every mother:  Please let my child's teacher "get her," appreciate her humor, her sweetness, her everything...Please let her teacher know that she's a good kid--not a perfect kid--but a good kid, and let her occasionally laugh at her jokes and smile when she sees her. Please. 

There are so many things I wish I could tell each new teacher who comes into our lives.  Sometimes they send home a paper that asks, "Is there anything you wish to share about your child"; most of the time they don't.  When they do, my mind races, tripping all over itself with everything I wish I could "share about my child."  Though none of it actually gets written (except two things in her third grade year), my hand that holds the pen struggles against the whispers of my heart.

I wish I could tell this new teacher, just meeting my daughter, about how we almost lost her when I got pneumonia in my fifteenth week of pregnancy.  I wish I could tell her how fighting for my unborn child's life helped save my own.  I wish I could tell her about how we allowed ourselves to be relieved that she made it, that she was born--only to have her turn blue before she was even three months old; how lucky a thing it was that I just happened to turn around in time to see her apneac and dying--in my arms she was limp and slipping into gone.  I wish I could tell the teacher how precious those things make her.

I'd get a kick out of sharing the story of the night my daughter--two and a half years old--confidently corrected our Grammy (her great-grandmother) about Venus being a planet, not a star, as she sat on her daddy's shoulders on a bat watching evening.  How awesome is that?

I wish I could make it matter to the teacher that her dad and I gave her no voice in the decision when we moved from California to Pennsylvania, away from all her friends and all of her family--including our Grammy--mid-school year.

I wish that I could talk about her crazy-brave resiliancy in the fact that, with that cross-country move, she had to adjust to not only a new state with no one she knew, but to life in a hotel for months, while we waited for our house to sell in the crappy California housing market.  That she had to get used to three schools, three teachers and 60 different sets of eyes looking at "the new kid" as she entered the door of each new classroom that year of second grade.

I wish her new teacher could have met my daughter before the bratty girl in the second school of second grade led a brigade to convince her that she was "too smart"--in a bad way--and broke her spirit in math, when she'd JUST gotten comfortable in it.  I wish the teachers she's had since could help bring that spark back that was stolen.

I wish I could get it in writing that I wouldn't have to rush her to the ER for stitches at the hand of a troublesome boy or have to answer calls and console tears because of the same kid, again and again, and I'd kind of like it to be known that I'd kind of like to let my husband go toe-to-toe with the kid's dad once, like he'd like to do.  I'd like to know that this kid will be kept away from my daughter this year--six strikes is enough, and we're ready to go to the school board and show what true Mama and Papa bears look like in human form. 

(But that part would probably scare the new teacher, so I should probably keep that to myself...but I'll continue to think it.)

How awesome it would be to be able to tell the new teacher that my daughter's favorite band has been The White Stripes since preschool, and she can play "We Are Going to Be Friends" on her electric guitar.  I'd also mention that she took Tae Kwon Do for years and got all the way to green belt (and ready for her next belt test) in one school, only to have to start from scratch and work her way up back to it in another, because the first didn't register her with Kukkiwon in Seoul, Korea.  She did it twice, because that's what kind of kid she is.  I'd like to mention that, in first grade, my daughter's teacher loved the fact that she always "got" the joke that no other kid did, and that her humor was considered valuable and welcome in that classroom.  I'd also like to point out that my daughter is pen pals with children at Sareka House in Cambodia, and she might be one of the only ones in the classroom inherently kind enough to think about cultural differences and work from a place of sensitivity to that when writing to them or when we chose books for our care package to send to them.  I'd love for the teacher to know that sometimes, even when my daughter seems like a snide comment doesn't bother her, girls haven't always found it in their hearts to be kind to her, and some of that bravado is her way of trying not to cry--please protect her.

I guess the last thing I'd like to say to the teacher (if I could really get her to hear me) is that I realize I can't make her love my child, and it's okay if she doesn't, because I have enough for both of us, all that I ask is that she doesn't let my daughter know. 

• note #1--I used to teach; I've been on the other side, and I know that the specialness of each child has to be kept in mind.  I don't teach now, and, honestly, (like everyone) mine's the one who matters to me.
• note #2--The diary that I kept on the night that we spent in the hospital, after my daughter turned blue, can be found HERE (Diary of a Parent at Her Daughter's Bedside)