Dad reports this morning:
Last night was bad. I forewarned Tommy on the phone that sometime at the house we would be discussing the “grabbing of butts” and that he should prepare himself for a calm discussion. I waited until after dinner and until it was just Tommy, Mom and I. I began the discussion by saying that “we are not debating whether or not it happened. We are only discussiing appropriateness.” I tried to focus on paying attention and not ‘accidentally’ bumping into people. The conversation was never a conversation. Tommy insists he “didn’t do it!” and the conversation rapidly deteriorated into a shouting match that scared the dickens out of all the other children and animals, had me forcefully trying to get him to quit yelling (briefly covered his mouth to ask “please quit yelling”), had Mom yelling “I’ll leave!” (interpretation: I’ll take the kids out of the house while you calm down) and resulted in $100 and a couple of weekends worth of drywall work to be done and a sore wrist (interpretation: my wife asked for a divorce because I would not stand to allow a child to verbally abuse his parents). Of course the end result is that I am considered the “verbal abuser” and the likely cause of Tommy’s rapid decline.
Btw, we are not convinced that the “grabbing of butts” is not a gross exaggeration on the school’s part. I back that up with the fact that on Friday I asked the school “was anything out of the ordinary today?” and they still didn’t tell me about the substitute. The interview questions the psychologist has been asking are completely sided toward trying to have Tommy removed. The question “Just what does Knox County Schools think of Tommy?” has been posed to us as the result of such an interview. If the school is actively trying to remove him rather than educate him, honestly, what are his chances of success?! If they don’t want him, they need to find him a placement instead of trying to make him go away.