William started kindergarten and he likes school a lot. He likes riding the bus. He likes his teacher. He likes his new friends. He likes the playground. Everyday he comes homes filled to bursting with details of his day that he cannot wait to share.

Last week he sat at the dinner table with his mother and his grandparents eating away, talking about his new friend. He said that his new friend calls the teacher ‘an idiot’. We all stopped eating to stare. We all assured him that this was not a good thing to do. We also assured him, right away, that if he ever spoke to a teacher like that he would be IN DEEP TROUBLE.

He’s never been IN DEEP TROUBLE before but the words were spoken grimly enough that he must have decided that he didn’t want to go there.

He turned the topic back to his friend. He said “And you know what else? He pushed a kid on the playground.” We continued eating but we did comment that he did not sound like a good friend because good friends did not call people/teachers names and they did not push people. Always looking for an opportunity to point out consequences, we said, “He probably got in trouble, didn’t he?”

William said, “Yes. He had to go sit on the bench and think about what he have done.”

Solemnly we said, “That’s what happens when you do bad things. You get in trouble. That would be a terrible thing, sitting on the bench while everyone else got to play.”

Quite suddenly we were all acting out a scene from ‘A Christmas Story’ as William looked us with big brown eyes. “Yep. He was mad. He said ‘fuuuuuuuuudddddggge’.”

His mother and his grandpa and his grandma nearly swallowed their eating utensils. We all exclaimed at the same time, “No! No!” and “We don’t ever say that word!”

Kindergarten.

I remember kindergarten. I don’t exactly remember what I did but I am very sure that it did not involve the word ‘fudge’. I remember having to get my mat out and lay down on it while the rest of the kids had story time. Even though I could have heard the story perfectly from where I lay, I cried through the entire thing, mortified at being punished. I don’t remember any other school punishment until I was in 7th grade.

I guess things have changed.

I remember when Dylan was a kid, maybe 10 or so. Our family was going through a very hard time. I was a newly single parent, and every single thing in their lives had changed. Their home. Their friends. Their father was out of the picture. Financially things were different. I was working and frazzled and to my bewildered children, I probably even seemed like a different mother. I surely felt like it.

I remember Dylan crying in his room, upset about something. I went in to talk to him. His frustration burst out of him and he vented his spleen. He said, “Sometimes I wish I could swear!” and he looked at me to be shocked.

I said, “Well, Dylan, if you really think it would help, you have my permission to swear.”

He stared at me in astonishment. “I’m not going to get in trouble if I swear?”

“Not from me,” I said. “Sometimes I swear too. I know that you’ve heard me. But I want you to remember something. If you swear in school, you’re going to get in trouble. If you get in trouble at school, you’ll have to take your punishment, because you know what the rules are. If you swear around the kids and parents hear you, they are not going to want you to play with their children. But in the end, it is your choice what kind of little boy you want to be.”

He thought things over, and decided he would only swear at home. He tested the situation out by telling me that he was ‘darn’ mad. He told me that he wanted things to be the way they always were. I told him I did too.

After that conversation, I made a silent vow to consider my own words more carefully. As for Dylan, once he had permission to swear, he rarely did so, after the first initial days of shocking the sugar out of his sisters by popping out with darn and heaven a few times.

That was that. He never got into trouble at school for it. I never heard him swear much until his high school days when I came up at a football game to give him something that he’d forgotten. His friends’ eyes grew wider and wider as they watched me approach. He stood with his back towards me turning the air blue. Finally he picked up on their non-verbal cues. He turned around and said, “Oh. Hey mom.”

Indeed.

I was second guessing my parenting choice in that moment. A lot. When Dylan was 10, I took a lot of heat for that decision, but I saw it like this: he was a young boy with a lot on his plate. I wanted him to be okay. It was a long hard road, but he is okay. They all are okay, and I’m glad for that.

William’s in kindergarten. He’s learning lots and lots of new things, good and bad things, but we’re not all that worried about him, long range. He has a family that is quick to point out right and wrong and he sees with his own little eyes the consequences of bad choices. Not every kid has that kind of support though. Those are the kidlets that I worry about.

I think about William’s little classmate. I think about how the world has changed. I think about all the things that teachers deal with now that were unheard of in my time. Mostly, I think that our teachers deserve that raise.