Did I do the right thing?

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-01-2006
Did I do the right thing?
22
Wed, 04-18-2007 - 10:12pm

Hannah comes home from school and tells me she hates so and so. I ask her why and she shows me her binder. It's a picture of something scratched out. I tell her to draw what's scratched out. She draws a p. I'm livid. I know the 8th grader. I went to Cape Cod with her mother a few years ago. We were on the executive board on the PTA together. I think about this and think about this. I finally call the mother and tell her I'm livid. She was really nice. Told me her daughter wasn't home but that she would get to the bottom of it. That her daughter needs to buy Hannah a new binder, blah, blah, blah.


Now, I haven't told Hannah that I talked to the mother but when I do she'll be ticked. Sorry but I hate it when 8th graders pick on 7th graders. This is the thing that the 8th graders are doing to the 7th graders. Drawing P's on their binders. It's a peer pressure thing. I told Hannah that if I get a phone call from a mother telling me that she drew a P on her dd's binder I'd be very disappointed, amongst other things I said, like I'd kick her butt.


Would you call the mother or let it go?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-26-2003
Wed, 04-18-2007 - 10:26pm

I would have let it go!


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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-01-2006
Wed, 04-18-2007 - 10:29pm
Maybe i should have but I know the kid and the mom very well. It just ticked me off. :)
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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-01-2006
Wed, 04-18-2007 - 10:31pm
Wanted to add that while we were all in cape cod we said that if our kid did anything inappropriate we would call each other. I think we were talking about drugs and such at the time. I hope one of the moms doesn't call me and tell me they heard or saw Hannah smoking or whatever these kids tend to do in Junior High.
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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Wed, 04-18-2007 - 11:14pm

If I knew the girl and the mom, I would have probably made the call too...then probaby came here to ask if I'd done the right thing too! :P

On a side note but still on the same topic (kindof) my sister actually called me today because yesterday she saw her friend's 14 yr old daughter walking beside the road with a friend smoking! Seems her husband is totally angry with her for butting in but the worst part is that the girls mom KNOWS she smokes and even buys them for her if she gives her the money. Seems both parents smoke, they figure she's doing it anyway so why make her hide it! And this is a 'good girl' from a 'good family' according to my sis, who's a notorious snob! LOL! So sis is freaking out over this mom's nonchalance and her own hubby is mad at her...I told her that YES I'd have done the same thing!

Dontcha love busybody moms like us! LOL!

Denise

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-01-2006
Wed, 04-18-2007 - 11:55pm

Gosh, that poor 14 year old. What's in store for her next?


Back to the P on the binder. LOL Unfortunately my dh is not around tonight. He grounds me. He would have thought about it over night and then made a decision to call


iVillage Member
Registered: 07-19-2003
Wed, 04-18-2007 - 11:59pm

Don't second guess yourself -- you did what you thought was right. Just as long as you realize that there is no guarantee telling another parent about something inappropriate that their kid did will actually result in them doing anything about it!!! Not all parents feel the same way about these things.

Case in point:

Last year my son had two friends over. They had all recently gotten Nintendo DS systems (those handheld games) so they wanted to visit and play together. One of the kids comes over all the time and we know his parents really well and he never gave me any trouble. The other I'd never had over but I know his mom from the school and although he was a bit loud they had a good time together.

Well after they leave my son tells me 3 of his DS games are missing!!! They were there, they were played with and now they are gone. Each of those things costs $30/$40 so its a considerable loss. Immediately I call the parent of the one kid I know better and she checks all her son's stuff and doesn't find anything. I wouldn't suspect anything worse than him picking up the games by mistake because frankly this kid and his family are quite wealthy and he has loads more than my son does including many of the games that my son also had. Besides he had been over many many times and never had something gone missing -- not even accidentally.

So I call the other kids mom. Tell her what happened, asked her to check his stuff. Now this kid was more problematic. He had gotten the system for Xmas but only with a demo game -- no one had bought him any games even though he had had the system for months. So it was more likely that he would try to steal some games. His mom went through his stuff and said she found nothing but these game carteridges are tiny -- small as a postage stamp really. I don't know what to say ie how can these games just up and disappear?

Less than a week later the kid shows up at school with his game system and a game like the one my son "lost". He said his mom had bought it for him. Right....this was a game that was so hot it was sold out everywhere. So finally I told my son that this kid was no longer allowed to come to our house, I was so upset. Somehow word got to the kid that he was banned from my place and then within no time his mom is giving me cold shoulder everytime we saw each other. She was outraged that I accused her son of stealing.

Nobody wants to think their kid is stealing but come on, if some parent had called me on this issue I would turn my son's room upside down and keep checking his stuff later. I would need to ensure that if he did do something like that he didn't get away with it. But that's how I would handle the situation and not how others would. Maybe even some of you on this board.

So....do what you think you gotta do but don't expect parents to care the same way you care or to handle things in the same way you would...

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 04-19-2007 - 8:44am

I just have to ask...what was the P for?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-26-2003
Thu, 04-19-2007 - 8:47am
Well since you personally know the mom and girl and you and the mom have had an understanding, then yes you should have called.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-01-2006
Thu, 04-19-2007 - 9:12am
The 8th grader drew a Pen** on her binder. :)
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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 04-19-2007 - 10:11am
I amaze myself at how absolutely slow I am sometimes!
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