The Bad Seed

Every teacher I have ever known has a few students they just didn’t like. Your job then requires you to ignore whatever your personal objection is to this child and go out of your way to treat them exactly as the others. The opposite is true as well. There are children you favor. Once again you go out of your way and try not to show favoritism. This is just human nature. I had this one child, a student in that kindergarten that was the most beautiful girl. She easily could have been a child model. She had a disarming smile. Sometimes I would look at her at “see” a muddy dark, almost black color surround her. Shortly after the term started. I would see her staring at me. She wasn’t loud, or disruptive but that stare and the semi smile that came with it unnerved me. Within a few days of school, I stopped her several times, from hurting some class pets we had in cages in our room. We had a bunny, we had some lizards, we had goldfish. They each had their own environment and the kids loved them. Of course only the bunny was “petable” and each day I would take him out of the cage for the kids to hold. Very often children would go over to the cages or aquarium and look at the animals. We had a feeding schedule and each day another student, under supervision would provide the food. Once again only the bunny could be handed the food. Except for the fish, several parents volunteered to take home the lizards and the bunny for the weekends or extended holidays. I know I have told you about my “hearing ability.” One day the children were all working on different puzzles in small groups. I walked around the room observing and suggesting. I went over to a closet to prepare the material for an art project. I heard a screech. It was the strangest sound, I had never heard it before. I turned around and saw that little girl torturing the lizard. She was holding a scissor, from my desk in attempting to cut off the lizard’s tail. I was there in two seconds and relieved her of the scissors. I remained calm and told her, things on my desk were for me only. I took a breath and asked her why she wanted to hurt the lizard. She looked at me with the coldest eyes and said, “ I know if I cut off his tail, it will grow back. I wanted to watch that.” I told her that while that may be true, the lizard was a living thing and felt pain.”

She looked at me and replied, “I like to see things in pain.”

She went back to her desk, we did the next project and the day was over. I told the principal and then called the child’s mother. I explained what happened and the child’s attitude and the mother said,”Wow you discovered it in a couple of days? I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do with her.”

Can you imagine? This was a 5 year old! The principal called the mother after I told her about the brief discussion. The next day when the kids came to school, the mother came in to have a chat with the principal and myself. An assistant was put into the classroom with instructions to keep her eyes on the girl.

So much for watching her. She enticed a little boy into the big coat closet and made him urinate over everyones jackets and sweaters. He thought it was hilarious, she was delighted and squealed that he listened to her.

The mother took her child home. She was expelled from kindergarten. What happened next to her I don’t know. As ridiculous as it sounds, she was evil. I hope she received help and I hope she recovered but I don’t know and never found out.

I liked that particular preschool. I liked the Principal. However, it was supposed to be a Montessori school and I could not get a handle on how instruction should be. I had no one to guide me. In fact, not one of the teachers had any Montessori training. Parents started to complain. To make matters worse, I was the only certified teacher. I guess it was because the Principal was so lax and because the pay was so bad. I was biding my time to get back to a half way decent pay scale. I stayed there another year and then left.

I had my son tested because I didn’t think it was beneficial for him to spend the next year in Kindergarten. The psychologist who evaluated him agreed that academically he probably could go into 2nd grade, BUT, socially he felt it was detrimental. I understood his concern, I had lived it. I enrolled him in a private school, a Quaker school. He was considered a Kindergartener, but he did the first grade curriculum. He aced it, and spent most of his time reading books under a large table. He did interact with the other kids though and in general had a very successful year. The public school had to take him the following year as a 2nd grader. I of course had noticed how bright he was. Perhaps it took others longer because he had a speech impediment and he was not a talker. My daughter on the other hand was born talking, it seemed. At 18 months, tiny as I was, she would speak in paragraphs! We shocked another mom once. I had her in a stroller and she had her child in a stroller as well. She was nibbling on some animal cookies, holding the box in her hands. I was shopping in a department store and looking through a rack of clothes. The other mother stopped at the same rack. My daughter asked me, “ Mommy can I give that child a cookie?” The other mom looked at her and immediately asked how old she was. Then my daughter asked her if her kid could have a cookie!

Well that was life in my house with two little kids. It was more than interesting and lots of fun. I was so very lucky, but I was exhausted. I learned accidentally that my son could read one day, when my husband was watching a sports documentary. Before they said anything the screen would have a photo of the athlete and the name printed below. My son was 2 and quietly playing with some blocks. As the screen would change, he would look up and read out loud the name of the celebrity. I looked at my husband and said, “He’s reading the names!” He turned down the volume and we waited for the next picture, sure enough he looked at the name and read it perfectly! We tried not to be too excited but we would hold up any written thing and he would read it. I picked him up and went with him next door to my neighbor and announced he could read. She didn’t believe me. She picked up a box that said, DONUTS in big colorful letters and asked him to read it. He looked at her like she was nuts. I looked at him and said, “What does it say?” With that he started to read the side label facing him telling her what the ingredients were. When he finished he had no idea that it was anything special.

It was more than reading, when he was a little older and the speech improved, he would sometimes come out with the wildest statements. I know it wasn’t something he heard or saw. For example, sitting in the kitchen one day, he said, “You know Mom, nothing ever really dies, it just changes form. It’s matter and energy that’s all! I can’t remember my response I was too much in shock. This went on for a few years. Or he would sit with strings or thin chains and create a collage of different types of triangles. Everytime he would say or do one of his things, I would say, “What?” and his answer was always, “Oh never mind.” I wish now, that I had questioned him, perhaps he had lived before. It’s not such a wild idea!