My son is perfect. He is kind, generous, incredibly intelligent, excellent manners and easily bored. I send him to public school here in Nashville, although my parents keep nagging encouraging me to put both of my children in private school. We’ve done well with the elementary school that is zoned for my neighborhood – until this year.

I don’t know what it is about my son’s teacher this year. She just rubs me the wrong way and so does our new principal. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but her smile seems fake and she almost never looks me in the eye when she is talking to me. At first I thought maybe I was intimidating her, so I make a point to stand a little further away from her when we talk so as to not invade her personal space or make her feel threatened. I make a huge effort to frame my words and sentences like I am on her side and we are a team working for the benefit of my son. But after we talk and I leave, it is like she goes batshit on my son and I get a barrage of nasty notes sent home in his backpack about how disruptive he is, how he doesn’t finish his work, he pushed someone in line, etc.

I ask my son about what happened and every time he has a good answer, a decent explanation about what happened and honestly, so much of it was something that needed to be handled on the spot rather than sending home nasty notes. I think she must be a passive aggressive person and enjoys pointing out any misbehavior or supposed character flaw in the children.

Today, he came home with a “red dot” on his behavior calendar for pushing. That just does not make sense that my son would push another kid for no reason. I asked him what happened and he told me that the boy in line behind him bumped into him several times – on purpose. When my son told him to knock it off, the other kid just laughed in his face and then pushed my son so hard he bumped into the kid in front of him. The other kid that got bumped as a result of my son being pushed cried out and got the teacher’s attention, and it was my son who got in trouble for pushing.

Now, I’m sure that the teacher had her hands full with trying to get the whole class lined up and dispatched, but would it have killed her to take all three boys aside and find out what happened instead of just lashing out at my son? This is what bullying is all about, pushing a kid and mocking him, and I refuse to tolerate anyone bullying my kids. I want the other kid, the one who started it, to get in trouble and I will be calling the principal about this tomorrow morning. But in the meantime, I gave my son a pep talk and told him he did nothing wrong. And if the kid pushes him again, to tell the teacher, not just try to handle it himself. But honestly, I am proud that he DID try to handle it himself and I don’t like telling my son to be a tattle tale. But if he doesn’t, this teacher will blame him for the problem. It’s just not a good situation at all and I’m very annoyed with this teacher for the way she is mishandling these issues.