When our son was just starting kindergarten, I received a call from our son’s school, requesting our son and I come to the principal’s office the following morning. This was shocking to me, because our son was a shy, ‘people pleaser’ and at that time of his life, seemed to stay out of trouble. When I got to the school to pick him up, I asked his teacher what happened. His teacher let me know that my little guy had thrown another boy’s lunch on the roof of the school. Trying not to show how impressed I was that he could throw something so light so high, and accurate enough to make it stick. I took him by the hand, thanked the teacher, and we headed to our car. Before leaving our parking spot, I asked my son to tell me his side of the story.
According to this little guy, he was playing ‘leapfrog’ with several boys before school on the asphalt playground. It was one of the larger boys turn to leap over the long line of boys, one by one, leaping his way from the back to the front. This big boy decided that instead of putting his hands on the middle of our son’s back to hop or leap over him, this big boy put both hands on my son’s head and smashed his face into the asphalt! Then he showed me his scraped-up cheek. I tried to stay calm as I asked him what happened next. He told me he knew he couldn’t hit the kid, so he grabbed his lunch, and threw it on the roof. I asked him if he let the teacher know what happened, he said no… that he knew what he did was not right, and he knew he was in trouble. I told him that I was proud of him for not fighting back, that what he did was not right, but that we needed to make sure his teacher knew everything that had happened before we went home.
We went back into the classroom, and I asked if we could have a minute of the teacher’s time. I asked our son to first apologize to his teacher, then tell her what happened BEFORE he threw the boy’s lunch on the roof. After sharing his story, he pointed to the ‘road rash’ on his cheek. She apologized to our son for not knowing the entire story. The three of us talked about things he could do besides tossing lunches on the roof.
The next day, my son and I went to the principal’s office. We were surprised to find two other kids with their parents already there. The principal addressed the big kid who got a free hot lunch yesterday because his lunch was on the roof. She now had the whole story, and instead of fussing at our son, she had the boy apologize to our son, and let all the boys (and parents) know that she didn’t like the fact that the boys had been bullied. Although throwing the lunch on the roof was not the right thing to do, the fact that our son had road rash on his face, she wanted to use this experience to teach these boys that they should never hurt each other.
When I think of this, I have so many emotions flood my mind. I was proud of my son for not physically fighting back, for finding a way to ‘fight back’ without really hurting anyone, and for the awesome throw. I was so glad no one was hurt too bad. I was so glad that our son learned a valuable less that day. He learned that he needed to speak up, no matter what. He learned that he was in a lot of trouble until the truth came out, but once everyone knew the whole truth was revealed, the truth got him out of trouble.
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32
