There are three boys in my ten year old daughter’s year who are known as Those Boys Who Get Into Trouble All The Time. There’s one in my seven year old’s class. Every school has them. For a few years when he was young, my brother was one of Those Boys. I can remember my parents’ anguish at having to go down the road to school to see the Principal, yet again, because of some mischief my brother had gotten himself into. But I didn’t really appreciate how difficult it must have been for them until today.

I was standing in the playground this afternoon, chatting with a couple of other mothers as we swapped kids for afternoon play-dates, when I was struck in the back of the head with something sharp and hard. The force was enough to knock my teeth together and send my sunglasses right off my face and onto the ground. I clutched the back of my head and spun around to see what it was and where it had come from. One of the other mothers picked up a small rock as three boys turned away from me with their hands in their pockets and their eyes cast upwards. Wasn’t us.

I looked down at my hand, fully expecting to see blood, but there was none. My head was aching immediately and now, about an hour later and despite a couple of pills, I’ve got a dull ache behind my left eye. So, not a serious injury, but it was all I could do to hold myself together as I turned to look at these boys and try to figure out why on earth they might have decided throwing rocks was a good idea.

They all looked at me with what I can only describe as intense guilt mixed with utter contempt. You know that look? You see it in mug shots all the time. People who get caught doing stupid things have that look. It says, sure, of course it was me, but I’m not saying that out loud and you can go and get stuffed.

Sorry, I’m just still a bit angry.

I asked them who had done it, and they closed ranks. Nobody was willing to tell on anyone else, and nobody was going to ‘fess up. Well, I suppose I didn’t really expect them to. I told them that they all had to come with me, right now, to the Principal’s office, and they didn’t budge. The mother who had picked the rock up was standing beside me, and two other parents were nearby, backing me up. Three little boys and four scary-looking mothers. Quite a showdown. And yet the longer they stood there, stonewalling me, the weaker I felt. My legs were shaking, my eyes were watering, and I was on the verge of losing it. The other parents were urging me on, telling me to go and tell the Principal, but I just couldn’t help feeling as though it would be complete waste of time. Not because the Principal wouldn’t do anything (on the contrary - she absolutely would) but that it would have no impact at all on Those Boys. They literally didn’t care.
The boys walked off defiantly. What was I going to do? Part of me wanted to just go home, part of me wanted to crack their heads together. Suddenly, one of the boys’ mothers turned up. She was carrying a toddler, and she walked up to the boys and started talking to them. Her son pointed at me and said “that bitch was saying I threw something at her.” Quick as a flash his mother grabbed him by the arm and said “don’t you dare!” and he looked down at his shoes. I decided at that moment to talk to her, and tell her what had happened.

What do you say to the mother of a kid who knocked your glasses off your face with a rock to the back of the head? Seriously?

I think she handled it about as well as she could have, although she did seem willing to consider the possibility that it was somebody else entirely. She asked them who else was around, and of course by that stage some other kids were playing where they had been, so he pointed at the group. I looked over at the kids with the football, and told him that they were nowhere near me when I got hit. I said that I turned around the moment it happened and they were standing right there. There was no doubt in my mind, I said, that one of the boys had thrown it. The only alternate story I was willing to consider was that it had been thrown up into the branches of the tree (maybe at a bird?) and come down to hit me on the head. Is that what happened? Did I just get unlucky? They shrugged their shoulders again and said nuh, they hadn’t been throwing anything.
I looked again at the mother. She had the face of a woman who was exhausted from having to deal with a bad seed who started out life like all babies do - as a gorgeous, gurgling blank canvas. I don’t know what has happened in the intervening years, but this boy of hers must be hard, hard work. I know nothing about their circumstances, and I’m not going to judge her. What I want to know is, whose responsibility is it to make sure these kids get through their childhoods without taking somebody’s eye out with a well-aimed rock? Whose responsibility is it to support the parents of these wayward kids, so that they grow up with the best possible chance of staying out of juvenile detention? And whose responsibility is it to ensure these kids get through their school years without, at the very least, disrupting the education of the other kids in the class?

Eventually one of the other mothers convinced me to go and report the incident to the Principal. I took Madeleine with me - Ella had gone to a friend’s house - and found the Principal, Ms J, sitting on a lounge chair outside her office, wrapping up a conversation with one of the teachers. As soon as I sat down I burst into tears, it was the most ridiculous thing. I started shaking all over again, and could barely speak. Madeleine went to get me a glass of water and Ms J looked at me with a very worried expression. I eventually managed to tell her what happened and she immediately sent another teacher out to the playground to see if the boys were still there. We all ended up out in the playground a few minutes later, talking with the boys and the mother and well, I don’t really need to go into details. Suffice to say it was handled as well as it could be, given that nobody was confessing, and nobody could actually say they had seen the boys throwing the rocks. In the end I left them all to talk it out amongst themselves.
I have now relayed the whole story to my husband, and he’s absolutely furious. His attitude is that these boys, all of them, are guilty as long as nobody is willing to confess. He believes that what these boys did was something that had the potential to cause a serious injury, and in the adult world would be called assault. His attitude is that a talk to the mother in the playground is not enough, and whatever that family’s circumstances are, there’s no excuse for what happened and something needs to be done. He doesn’t share my concern about whose responsibility it is to make sure these kids avoid jail. He just wants to know what is going to happen now. You can imagine he’s just thrilled to know that the main suspect is in our daughter’s class.
So I guess we’ll be going to see Ms J on Monday. I still wonder about what can possibly be done. I suppose part of me doesn’t want to make life any harder for this mother than it clearly already is. But another part of me is glad I’ve got my husband standing in my corner, backing me up, and calling this whole thing for what it is - a pretty goddamn serious situation.

I would be really interested to hear from parents who have had to deal with similar situations at their kids’ school. What did you do? How did the school deal with it? And how did you get past your reluctance to cause the imperfect parents of the imperfect child further grief? Oh, and just for the record, my brother turned out to be just fine, no permanent damage was ever done, and today he’s one of my favourite people on earth.

Bookmark to: