Missed Recess

Teancom came home and told us that he'd had a recess detention.  He's never had one before, so this got my attention.  I asked him what happened and he said, "I didn't show my work on my homework."

... Umm ...

I asked if he was serious and he said he was.  I asked if he'd gotten any questions wrong.  He said he hadn't.

(Here's where I rant about how silly I think it is that he was punished for not showing his work.  Imagine this rant in your brain so that I don't actually have to write it all out.  I mean, you know how it'll go.  You have my thanks for putting in the time inside your brain so that I don't have to.  And look!  I personalized my message for each and every one of you!  I'm very thoughtful that way.)

I tried not to let Tank see that I was rolling my eyes and then gave him some halfhearted speech about how he needs to show his work if that's the rule, blah, blah, blah.

And then Elijah chimes in with, "You got a recess detention?  I loved recess detention.  It was kinda nice to have everything so quiet."

"Did you get a lot of recess detentions?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah, all the time.  Sometimes when I said that I liked detention, teachers would threaten that I'd get a whole week of detention if I liked it so much.  And I said, 'Fine.'"

I just sat there stunned.  I had no idea he'd had so many or that the power struggle had been happening at school like that.  I mean, it doesn't surprise me, but I just didn't realize it'd been happening.

Then he asked Miciah, "Did you like recess detention?"

"I never had one."

"Not one the entire time?"

"Nope."

Tank chimed in, "This was my first one."

"Oh.  I had a million.  They were great."

And that pretty much sums up the personalities of each of my children.