4 posts tagged “kids”
I am so tired. So tired. Kid in school made me so angry. I have never railed at a kid so bad before. Today I have experienced literary cliches. I hear about how this idiot in my class beat up some other kid. "Her mouth pursed into a straight line." I called the victim and perpetrator (P) over and enquired about the incident. I heard said perpetrator's shallow drivel of a reason why he pushed a boy down, hit him on the head with a water bottle and kicked him on the arse. Apparently, victim has tripped over P's leg. I felt my eyes narrow slightly as I viewed the impending death of P. "Her eyes hardened." Wow! Literature becomes real! I'll bet my secondary 2 lit teacher never saw me learning the lesson this way.
Twice I'd gone to search for the big-voiced, grandfatherly and frankly drill-sergeantish old man who was the "Stick" to all the little kiddies still to immature to understand "principal" - they all knew the terror that was Drill Sergeant. However, twice I'd gone looking, and twice said Sergeant was not at his desk. That was it. I had to deal with this little pest myself. I took the pest to the third floor and screamed at him for a quarter hour. I was so angry even my grammar went down the drain. I came back in the foulest of moods and even my class shut the hell up.
Talking to P's mom, I realised that I had finally admitted that I had reached the end of my rope. This kid... This kid... I'm giving up on him. How can I help someone who doesn't want to be helped? I feel like Jesus at the garden of Gethsemane in Jesus Christ Superstar, singing the line "After all, I tried for three years... seems like thirty, seems like thirty... could you ask as much of any other man?"It might not have been three years, more like a year and a half; but it fucking feels like thirty regardless. I keep feeling that I shouldn't give up on P. He's just a kid (like Chucky is just a doll), and he doesn't realize the implications of his actions (like a rabid wolf doesn't realize the implications of biting people). Then again... I hate him.
Is it wrong for me to hate him? I tried so hard. I really did. For the past year and a half, I tried. I begged his classmates to give him another chance when they couldn't stand him anymore. I asked them to be friends with him and help him remember to be good. I did that twice, not wanting him to be ostracized from his peers. He refuses to listen when they tell him to do things and kicks their bags in. Little dumb ass got himself ostracized. I get so many complaints about him everyday, and I honestly hate... hate the sight of him. Why?
Because he makes me so angry. He doesn't think before doing something stupid. He doesn't believe that what he is doing is wrong. He will promise to be good and try his best only to fuck up five minutes later. I've never been so angry with a kid in my life than today. In the beginning, I believed that he could be helped. I tried and tried to get him focused on his studies and settle down, to think before he did some stupid fuck up thing. His stupidity has only continued to this year, and I cannot take it anymore.
He's 8... I'm 25. I should hang in there and try again and help him. But I'm only human. I hate him. I don't want to talk to him. This got personal today when I realized he just wouldn't - refused to think. He wanted to be naughty plain and simple. There was no problem, no health issue. There's no family problem that causes this despite what he says - how can I believe him when he lies even to the school counsellor about how I see way he behaves and plays in class.
He just wants to be an unruly little beast. How many times must I cram the "Think before you act' routine down his throat? How many times must I grit my teeth and explain things to him with mock calm? All the love, patience and effort I put into helping him and it's come to nothing. What a waste of my fucking time. I may be wrong, but right now, I don't care. All my efforts are wasted. I cannot help him if he cannot help himself. If God gave this little blighter to me to teach me something, I'm damned if I know what the lesson fucking is. Don't give up? Control your temper? Help the ones you hate? If that is the case, God, you'd better show me what the hell I should do because I've tried everything short of killing him to put me out of my misery. Tell me what the hell I should do for P before I change my mind.
Kids these days got it easy. Yeah, they do. I can't help but wonder what's the matter with them these days. Compared to me at their age, I must have been pretty damn stupid. I accepted things, there was no such thing as 'Special'. Everyone was Normal. If you weren't Normal, and thereby slower than the rest, you got speed and Normality beaten into you. These days it's not like that at all.
Concessions are made for 'Special' kids. It's here that my mind goes into a knot. These concessions sort of ruin the race. To take that analogy, imagine education as a race. There are winners who win medals. There are those who finish the race, even if they didn't get a medal. There are those who run, those who walk, those who drop out and give up.
These days, we have the educational equivalent of the Special Olympics. Not that it's... bad. I just wonder if we're somehow taking kids off the race with the rest of them and putting them in the Special Olympics category just because those lazy buggers are slow because they're strolling. I really wonder how many 'Special' kids there are out there who are medically and truely Special, and how many are just fucking lazy.
You may be dyslexic and yes, when I was a kid, we had dyslexic kids too. The difference is they had spelling and math beaten into them, which, while not curing their dyslexia, at least ensured they had the life skills of counting their change and not spelling 'bird' as 'brid'. Dyslexia didn't stop Lee Kwan Yew from developing his Empire of Singapore, so why is it an excuse now?
Fie, fie. Forsake not the rod lest ye spoil the child, for all knoweth the birch is the greatest teacher of all.
Here in Singapore, it is a beguiling thing that there is a distinct difference between generations. "Kids These Days" are mostly rowdy, rude and skirts the edge of cruel. They act out in socially unacceptable ways and often, I wonder why this is the case.
Something tells me that it's because Kids These Days just don't get enough time to be kids. A lot of kids' days are filled with little else but study, enrichment classes, tuition, study and more study just for good measure. I asked myself what was wrong with an education system that spawns a multi-million dollar tuition industry?
I thought: It's because parents want kids to do their best.
I thought: Whose best? The best as defined by the school? Or the parent's? Or the best that a child can truly do?
I thought: Last time, my grandparents were just glad that their kids were even in school. The kids did their best without feeling the need to live up to anyone's expectations but their own.
I wondered: What's wrong with that?
Why can't kids these days do their personal best? What's wrong with that? So your child's 'best' is not what you think is good, as a parent. Firstly, your child is not perfect, just as you aren't. Let the kid do kid things. Let him ride a bike and fall. Let him play in the playground. The playground is a marvelous tool for introspection. If you get shoved on your butt by a bully, you'll know what it feels like so don't push anybody.
Also, the Xbox 360/PS3/Wii is not a tool that builds social skills - no, not even when you play online. Don't give your five-year-old a PSP... just don't. The kid won't appreciate it's worth, will most likely ruin it and in the future, you will have no grandchildren because you raised a nerd that believes joy comes from a screen. You have no one to blame but yourself.
