Kick It Up
When gentle parenting goes too far, a principal with a PhD and absolutely no patience left is about to teach one mother the meaning of consequences.
Forty-five-year-old Manumol was a principal. She believed she had seen everything life could possibly throw at a person. Really cheeky children, raging parents, ridiculously dramatic staff meetings, and enough excuses and stories from parents and children to write a whole bloody novel, really.
But nothing, NOTHING, prepared her for the mother who came into the office, sobbing as if life had personally offended her.
The woman sobbed more violently.
Manumol leaned forward, definitely more concerned now.
“Is everything all right? Is someone ill? Is there a problem—”
“It’s my son, ma’am!”
Manumol’s back straightened up instantly.
Her son? The child? Right, right. The child.
Oh no. Oh no.
Manumol was prepared to take the matter seriously, even ready to summon the implicated teacher. For all the exhaustion of being a principal, she took the matter of children being harmed on the premises seriously.
“All right, ma’am, I understand you are upset, but please do let me help you. Tell me what on earth happened.”
The woman took a great, trembling breath.
“My son is only five years old, ma’am. Four!”
Manumol nodded sympathetically.
“Ah... yes, LKG, isn’t he? That little one?”
“And they are treating him like a felon!” the mother sobbed. “Ma’am, they punished my child for being a child!”
Manumol’s heart cracked for a moment.
Oh, this poor child! Surely, whatever he had done, there had to be another way than handling it like this. Children were, after all, curious, innocent creatures.
And then the bomb dropped.
“So what if he sneaked into a teacher’s bag and took her lipstick and threw it to the ground?” the woman sniffled. “After all, he is just a child, right?”
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Wiping her eyes with a kerchief, she continued, “So what if he threw it at her and told her to shut up? She must have been the bigger person and an adult, after all!”
Manumol stilled for a moment.
A beat passed.
“I... come again?”
The mother sniffed.
“Be the bigger person!”
“Ma’am,” she added proudly, with an air of great moral conviction, “I practise gentle parenting.”
And as a woman who possessed a doctorate and had done her thesis and PhD on gentle parenting, Manumol was offended.
This woman had used her PhD thesis as an armed retort for her child’s crime, despite the fact that he did not even feel bad about what he had done.
Manumol smiled a smile that looked like a breakthrough in criminal psychology.
“Oh, absolutely, ma’am! I agree!” she said, far too cheerfully. “Because in your house, boundaries are a horrible crime, and the word no is a domestic violation.”
The woman’s mouth dropped open in shock.
Manumol smiled.
“In fact, I’ll call your little boy, and we shall practise gentle parenting on him, along with consequences for his mother, for an equal balance.”
The woman’s eyes widened.
“This is ridiculous! You can’t do that!”
“Oh, don’t worry, ma’am,” Manumol said, smiling and taking her school handbook. “I’m being the bigger soul. Trust me.”
For the first time that morning, the mother discovered just how lethal a weekday could be when an insomniac principal was involved.
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