Amy vents, Erik almost dies, and then they both feel better

If I had written this morning, then this post would say the following:

I HAVE HAD IT!!!!!! I swear if I hear that woman scold Stone and poke her finger into his chest saying "No llores" (don't cry) one more time, a demon of maternal fury is going to come roaring through my smile-mask and destroy her and all her stupid coloring pages.

Stone had made so much progress before I went to Paris, but while I was gone Erik had Stone stay at school all day every day, and a few days after I returned he hit a wall of exhaustion and ended up crying all day again. This was on a Friday, and next came the infamous Madrid weekend, after which the stomach flu kept him home from school for four days... and when it was time to go back, it was a complete and total relapse. He gets in the school door by riding the wave of Erik's immense positive energy in the mornings (R2D2 guiding the Jedi fighter plane, pretending to be statues and then chasing us to school, Luke riding the taun-taun, etc.), but the past few days when I go to pick him up I find him crying by himself. I've gone back to picking him up early, and I have to bribe him each time. And this is how I am greeted by his teacher:

"He cried again." With a flat, disapproving face. And then the chest poke - "NO LLORES."

"Why does he not know how to color? All the other kids can color. Look at this child's perfect coloring," (she pulls out an example) "and this one. And this one." (more freakishly perfect four-year-old coloring) I have always just answered "Yes, I know he isn't great at coloring. That is not something we have focused on at home or in school so it's new to him." And I keep my friendly tone and smile because a) I so badly want to be an open, understanding person and not close myself to learning from a different way of doing things; b) I was taught by my parents to never be rude; and c) I really need her to like Stone so I don't want to make her my enemy. But she says this to me EVERY DAY. "Why can he not color? He just scribbles. Everyone else can do it, why can't he?" And when I explain "We don't do this in the US - it will take him a little while to get used to it" she literally cuts me off mid-sentence and keeps saying what a failure he is with crayons.

So today when I picked him up (when I opened the front door he was waiting inside sobbing)... she came out and said with a frown, "Can he read??" Mistakenly I thought she had finally noticed something positive about him so my heart lifted a bit, and I started "Yes, he can! I taught him and he's reading pre-chapter books..." And then before I could finish, "If he can read already then I do not understand why he can't color." I gave the explanation one more time, barely holding back the demon who wanted to lash out "You know, you're right. Spain is really superior to the US in coloring. That is an extremely useful skill, and your educational system that ties children to their chairs at 3 years old and forces them to color for hours every day is really churning out a workforce that is more educated and creative than that of the United States! Spain's economy must be leading the world, with such a superior educational system!!" But my smile-dam holds back demon woman and I repeat the message "This is new for him. Thank you for being patient with him."

I made one last attempt at turning the conversation in a positive direction by pointing out that Stone did his homework assignment last night - he had to color and then cut out a frog and balloons and paste them on a prescribed place on an outlined paper. She said "Yes, he really needs to work on his cutting. I don't understand how he is so poor with those tasks."

Add to this the fact that yesterday when I picked him up, his face was wet with tears and his pants were completely soaked too. He told me that he had asked the teacher three times to go to the bathroom, and each time "she just yelled at me," so he couldn't go and he just stood there crying until he wet his pants "and it went down my legs and then squirted out my shoes!" Mortified, he then tried to walk away, slipped on the puddle, and fell. I asked him if he had told the teacher, and he cried "No, I don't speak Spanish so I didn't know how to tell her!!"

It was all I could do to not cry when he told me that story yesterday, but today when I picked him up I couldn't hold back my tears. I didn't let her see me but when our conversation was over I picked him up and walked out and cried quietly all the way home. I kept thinking "I am never bringing him back here."

But what am I going to do? The times I have let him stay home with me all day, we do "Mommy School" for awhile but then he is literally climbing the walls. At home when he was home with me, we had play group and Children's Museums and parks and activities and a pool and a trampoline.... here we have no yard and no friends who are home during the day. And selfishly.... I was hoping that I could have some time to explore Sevilla while they were in school. I had not anticipated that it would be this challenging. The scale really tipped in my mind this morning to the point that what he was getting out of school was vastly outweighed by the harm it was doing. His mind isn't even receptive to the language when he doesn't feel emotionally safe. Plus that woman looks like a frog. (Back in your cage, demon woman!!) She seriously does.

So want to know the story about Erik almost dying? As long as I'm venting about the stuff I can't stand here, I will say that the drivers are extremely aggressive and unconcerned with the safety of pedestrians. I have not yet grown accustomed to bringing my children out into a crosswalk with a green-lit WALK sign, only to have cars impatiently cross the crosswalk, a foot or so away from us. Having a green WALK sign apparently means "you're slightly safer than crossing Frogger-style in rushing traffic." So Erik was riding his bike home from Crossfit, and needed to cross the street. Long story short, he thought he made eye contact with a driver of a car, and he clearly had the right of way, so he built up speed and crossed, only to find that the car was speeding directly toward/in front of him. He slammed on his brakes, his inertia carrying his body forward and over the handlebars (keep in mind most Europeans don't wear helmets, so Erik doesn't either). In a flash his Ninja training kicked in (I'm not kidding) and he straddle jumped the handlebars and landed in a ninja roll on the street, popping up completely safely. (Am I married to the coolest man alive??) The driver of the car had of course screeched to a halt and jumped out to see if he was ok and apologize profusely. Oh wait, no, she opened her door to scream profanities at him and tell him to watch where he was going.

Ok, so now onto the part where we feel better in the end. Here are some wonderful parts of our day:

We pass this little tapas bar every day on our way to/from school and I always want to try it. Today I left Stone home with Erik, picked up the girls by myself and we had a girls lunch out! 

The restaurant has been open since 1792 (this plaque is on the outside wall)

YUM!! I way over-ordered but it was delicious

Erik does Ninja Training with Stone almost every day. Hopefully Stone won't have to use it in a near-car-crash.

Those girls in the distance are Lindsay and Naomi walking to their Flamenco Class. We let them walk there by themselves today! It's in a very safe place along a busy public road in the day-time but I was still nervous.

A Canadian couple at the park could not believe I was letting Stone climb and jump around on the top of the trains. You know how with your own kids you just know what they can and can't do? There is really no stopping this boy anyway. He might fall sometime (and I'm not excited about an ER in Spain for a broken bone), but I like that he does that stuff. I like it even more than if he were a great colorer.

Three more great things:

1. We always pass the same homeless man on a mattress on the sidewalk as we walk Lindsay to her meeting point with Naomi for Flamenco class. My kids have been asking/talking a lot about how to help the Poor (another post sometime), and today Sophie asked "Mom, do you have any coins today?" I did, and as she put a couple of Euros in his dish she was rewarded with the warmest smile and a very enthusiastic "Gracias!" I love the kindness of Sophie's heart.

2. I took S and S to the Train Park while Lindsay was at Flamenco, and it was full of children from our school! Sophie had a friend to play with (who we discovered lives nearby - they had a ball together!), and to my surprise, Stone really lit up when he saw friends from his class. One of them was his first friend, Ivan. I was telling a group of his little friends that the reason Stone cries in school is because everything is so new to him, and at first he really missed his home and his mommy and he didn't understand the language. "But now he is starting to feel more comfortable and make friends!" I said, to which Ivan replied, "Por ejemplo, Yo!!" (For example, I am!!) It was the dearest thing I could have heard. After a few minutes I met several parents, and it turns out that everyone has similar complaints about Stone's teacher (She is cold, she has "anciently outdated teaching methods," among other comments). It was really comforting for me to talk with other parents and know I'm not the only one who feels this way, and it gave me hope for Spain's future to know that their entire educational system isn't this backward and unfeeling! And WOW did it give Stone and Sophie a boost to see friends outside of school. We have LOVED being our own little Allebest Family Island, but I can see that it would really help them and maybe even me to get out and socialize a little more.

3. When I picked Lindsay up, I was bursting with all that frustration and sadness about Stone's teacher, and then so encouraged by our time at the park... and I was able to share it all with my friend Nicole, whose face radiated such empathy and care for me and my boy. We stood there on the busy street corner with me just jabbering away for a looooong time - again I realized how I really only talk with my family here, and I really needed to tell that story to another mom. I left that corner feeling almost physically lighter and commented to the kids on the way home that sometimes the best thing in the world is just a friend with a non-judging, compassionate listening ear. Not a solution, not an analysis, just a face that shows horror when you're horrified and sadness when you're sad and joy when you're happy. I couldn't believe how much better I felt after sharing that burden! Thank you, Nicole. And everyone reading who has been that to me, thanks to you too. I miss you!

This was quite a journal entry - if any of my friends or family have read all the way to here AND they still like me despite knowing that I am sometimes Demon Woman, then they must really love me. 

THE END.