Know Dumb Questions
Know Dumb Questions
KNOW DUMB QUESTIONS: Q&A
We wade into the emotional waters of how a parent's incarceration can shape a child's life, with personal reflections that may mirror your own or open your eyes to new perspectives. Parenting is not a practice that comes with a rulebook, and as we navigate the uncertain terrain of supporting our children's education, the challenge often grows when educators encounter disruptive or disengaged parents. I share strategies that have proven invaluable in maintaining a nurturing space for every child to thrive, even when the home environment lacks the support we wish every student had.
Wrapping up, the conversation pivots to what it means to be an administrator in the midst of family and school dynamics. It's a delicate dance that requires respect, understanding, and a consistent focus on what's best for our students. This episode isn't just about sharing experiences—it's about fostering a community of listeners who are as engaged in the well-being of our children as we are. So join us on this thought-provoking ride, and together, let's keep the conversation moving forward, because it's in these discussions that we find the keys to growth and understanding.
We are live. I am now an alum of Livingstone College in Salisbury, north Carolina. Big ups to the beautiful people at Livingstone. So glad you can join us today. Today is a super cool day. Hopefully you got what you wanted. For whatever holidays you celebrate, but today in particular, this is a celebration of you.
Speaker 1:I get questions pretty regularly on no dumb questions and because I typically have a guest, I find very interesting. Whether they be celebrity or not, I am usually focused on them, and so when your questions are coming in, we are ripping them down. But good evening, jasmine Elliott. So we are usually focused on just the conversation that we are having, but tonight we are going to do something special. We are going to take some time to answer your questions. Sometimes, when we put up videos afterwards, we get comments as well, and we want to send Aries. What's going on, karen Peters? So because we put the comments up and we put the videos up, we get comments. This gives me time now to go over some of the questions. So tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight I am going to do what I can't answer your questions. Last week I did something on parenting and I talked a lot about how.
Speaker 1:I am not a parenting expert. I work with children, I run schools, I am a social worker, I am an educator. But parents all of us do the best that we can because all of us are first time parents. So, by virtue of the fact that you are a parent, you are not an expert. An expert typically is somebody who has done something many times. As an educator, I have many times sent kids to college. Excuse me. As an educator, I have many times worked with parents who have children who are struggling. I have many times worked with teachers who are trying to find a way to develop their voice and communicate what they know. In those areas, I could argue some level of expertise. Expertise is doing something a lot of times and excelling at it, and there are people who have done things a lot of times but they are not experts. And the internet is filled with people who can tell you what to do, but they can't do it themselves. They comment on everything from food to fashion to people's sex lives or lack thereof, people's careers and music and dress, not my beat, not what I do. I work with kids and the people who work with them, but I am not a parenting expert, and I say that because I spend a lot of time working with parents who are just trying to find the best way to get their kids from point A to point B, and as a pup educator, I often felt like things were far more binary your son is not waking up in the morning? Well, just do this, just go in there. But over time, I found myself, not just as a parent but as an adult, meeting other people who had children and watching people who I know to be very intelligent and very committed to helping other people's children succeed, struggle with their own children.
Speaker 1:I'll share with you a story. A couple of years back, we were premiering a show that I was the host of. The name of the show is, ironically, saved my Son. And Saved my Son was on TV1. It was in 2010, I think 2010, 2011. And back then and I don't know now, but back then, when the show was premiering one of the things that would happen, from promotional purposes, was that they would have what's called an upfront, and upfront is what you might think. It's a celebration, it's a release party, essentially with advertisers. That's the important part. It's a celebration, it's a release, it's a premiere of a new show with advertisers.
Speaker 1:And so there I was on stage talking about this show, about taking children who were in crisis and working with their families to get them out of crisis, I would bring in my celebrity friends, some of whom would tell their stories. People like Charles Barkley came through and talked about his brother who had passed away. So that was the point of the story. The show, the arc of it, was we would meet some child who was in trouble. We would find out what the trouble was, I would talk to the young man, I would talk to his likely mother, and then he and I would do something together to try and help him along the path. That was Saved my Son. It did really well.
Speaker 1:Longer story for a different time, but after the premiere of Saved my Son, there was so much buzz in this room. Actually, this reception hall called Gotham in New York City is just a spectacular building. So this event is going on. It's a network, it's advertisers, it's the marketing mucks of all of the big companies your Coca-Cola's, your Wal-Mart's, the big companies and then me. So I just did this thing. It was going to be my first host show and so I didn't know what to expect or what I was supposed to do. I just did what I did and I talked about the show and I came off stage.
Speaker 1:So when I came off stage, it's a very smart looking, attractive sister came over to me who I had known to be I don't want to say her exact job at TB-1, but she was very, very high up, Very, very high up in the network. She said can I talk to you? I mean, you're the boss of everybody. So I, yeah, of course I'll talk to you. And she said um, I, you know, I'm in private. I was like, damn, we didn't even get the show out of the can and it's over. It's what I thought, because that's just the way I think. And so this just imagine this great big reception is gorgeous room, there's so many people there and everybody's buzzing. I thought the like, I thought the premiere went pretty well. So, you know, I just figured what do I know about TV? And it was phone while lasted, powerhouse productions, who was a black owned female production company, had done it. And I just figured we, you know, we, we, we took a swing and we missed and that was that. So I was going to go, I was walking over and there really was no place to be private in this room because it was reception. It was big, it was like loud music playing and everything's flying all over the place and it's a celebration, but it's cool. So she pulled me aside and just you know, can I talk to you? I said, yeah, sure. She said I'm having a lot of trouble with my son.
Speaker 1:I spent my career. I've spent my career working with parents who are poor almost all black or and or Latina, occasionally dads, but not that often. So it wasn't uncommon for me to work with them a mom, but much of my experience, both as a child and a young adult, was in poverty is how I grew up and it's what I had known. And so for me, I figured that what I was doing in my career was I was working with the indigent, as they're often referred. People like I was don't have money, and I was thinking that because they're poor and because they're black and because they're single parents, I was trying to overcome the unearned disadvantages of poverty and racism and that in working with them as a, as a family, I was really trying to get them to I don't know to be better.
Speaker 1:I thought, like a lot of people who grew up poor, that if I stopped being poor if I grew up and got an education and learned how to work with other people's children, joined the right clubs, went to the right schools, that I and those like me, we would all yield the same outcome. That all of our kids would go on to college and none of them would end up pregnant and none of them would end up having the siring a child. That we were on some level to be shielded from those experiences, because that was what I had seen growing up and I grew up poor. So since I grew up poor, I felt that all the things that I was seeing were a result of being poor and black in a housing project.
Speaker 1:When I had the conversation with this executive at this network, it was one of the earliest times for me that I began to see just what people were dealing with, not people like the people I had grown up being, and around people who didn't have anything but the Jacks and the Jails, the every Greek letter that forms an organization, the Cotillians, the Boulez, the Eastern Stars, all these organizations that I, when I was growing up, thought that if you make it to that level, if you make it to that level, then not only will you be happy, but your children will be shielded from all of the issues that I deal with professionally as an educator, working primarily in poverty and as a person who grew up in poverty, I thought that there was something that was part of our unearned disadvantages that was driving a lot of the bad decisions of a lot of my friends and, in some cases, family members. I thought the reason why the people I grew up with did drugs is because we were poor and that's what people did. It wasn't until I went to college that I saw more drugs than I had ever seen. But then I just figured out what is these crazy white people? They just buy too much drugs. Then I thought that, well, if you do the things that you're supposed to do as a parent saving the money a CHET account in Connecticut they call it before they even born tax-deferred money so that your children will have money for college, or if you meet the right person and you go to Lamar's classes and read to her belly and give them piano lessons and tutors before they're four years old to make sure that their math is good I thought that if you do those things, then you're good. You're good All those parents who I work with as an educator and social worker at one point running a homeless shelter. All those folks were dealing with the effects of poverty and racism, because if you remove poverty, while you may not be able to remove racism, you could amend the outcomes for children Over time.
Speaker 1:What I've found, as a person who is comfortably middle class, is that there are a lot of people like me and wealthier, whose children are people and whose people make decisions that are God awful. And I've watched as friends and very well-known people very well-known people have taken the doors off to their bedrooms, taken the TVs out of their bedrooms, taken the phones away from their children, taken the car away from their children, sending them to a relatives' house, sending them to rehab, sending them to long-term mental health care, and seeing that people with means are dealing with many of the same issues that people without them are dealing with is just the way that they deal with them is different, not more effective, just different. And the more and more I talk to people, the more and more I see no longer just at work, but as it was when I was at the upfront for Save my Son people with means, people who, by and large would have made all what we consider to be the right decisions when raising children. Struggling tonight to figure out what do we do here? Why won't she, why won't he do right? Where did they get this entitlement? You can wonder and kick yourself in the pants and like what the hell did I do wrong? So last week when I talked about this, it struck a chord with a lot of folks I talked a bit about.
Speaker 1:As an educator, we spend most of our career without children old enough to help us develop the empathy that's necessary to truly understand the plight of our parents. Parenting of five and six, and seven, eight, ten that ain't really hard. You control their whereabouts, you control what they do. By and large, you put them in the thing that takes them to the place that you decided. Where things start to get hairy is around six and seven grade, where those hormones start to kick in. Well, especially now, with so many teachers quitting teaching after just three years and most people entering education at 21, 24 years old.
Speaker 1:Excuse me, it's improbable that you have a 12 year old so that rub. When you look at it from the perspective of an educator. You can do that over and over and over again With 120, 12 year olds on your caseload in your class caseload being in your social work or in your class. If you're a faculty member or a teacher, you can become an expert at getting 12 year olds to perform tasks in a classroom. Or you can become an administrator and become an expert at getting 12 year olds to do something in a school. Or, if you're a social worker, you can become an expert at getting other people's 12 year olds to internalize their environment in such a way that they can make sense of it.
Speaker 1:But as a parent, it's the first time you've had a 12 year old, and that experience, running parallel to being an educator, can call into doubt your capacity as an educator when you see yourself as a parent. There's a very well known I don't want to call her a rapper, because she is more of an R&B artist, but a very, very well known artist too. We all know and I was talking to someone very close to her, and this is one of the biggest sellers of all time and this person said to me that this world renowned artist I mean, if I said her name you wouldn't know exactly who I was talking about, but that's not the point this world renowned artist who has a son. She has more than one child, but she has a son who's also interested in music, who's in his mid twenties now, has just decided to start listening to her. So being an expert educator won't make you an expert parent.
Speaker 1:Going through parenting and or raising a niece, nephew, relative but parenting, private and primary responsibility will help you be far more empathetic as an educator. It's just the truth. You don't have to like it, but it's true. Going through it, getting kicked in the pants, remembering the time that you told your son that if he goes outside this house you're going to take his car. And then he goes outside the house and you guys argue and go back and forth, and then you got to go to work and you let him use the car All those things that you say you wouldn't do when you have children, they will try you.
Speaker 1:I know somebody who's 13 year old daughter was pregnant. This man had to sit there and listen as his 13 year old daughter I said man, I'm sick because of what she came from an intact family, middle class family, 13 year old daughter. He had to listen to the doctor, the OBGYN, wonder if her pelvis was large enough to carry the baby. You don't know what you'll do. Until that's you in that room, you don't know. But if you were a teacher, who that's your child on Thursday afternoon, I'll be willing to bet that on Friday morning you're going to look at 13 year olds just a little differently and, more importantly, you're going to look at their parents a little differently. So the more people I've met from the same socioeconomic class are greater than I am the clearer it became that we're all still trying to figure this thing out that we call parenting.
Speaker 1:And as I'm talking, your questions are coming in and I know that many ask the questions because you feel like I know the answer and I don't always know the answer. As a parent, I likely don't trying to figure it out just like you, but as an educator, going in and out, really, if anyone else says that, let me know. As an educator, I can tell you certain things because in that area I have expertise, I have long term experience and no, okay, I have long term experience and success as a parent not so long term experience and I'm doing my best. Okay, sister Peter says she hears me. Fine, sounds normal. Okay, thank you guys, no problem, thank you all so much. Right now, what I'm going to do is I got the questions and read the questions to me that came through and then we'll go from there and if any of you have any questions, let me know and I'll do what I can to answer the question.
Speaker 1:The reason why we call this show no Dumb Questions is because, as in K and O W, we want you to know what a dumb question is and isn't, and, as it relates to the topics that we cover, that have no dumb questions. They're all good questions Because I believe the smartest person in the room is the one with the best questions, not the best answers. Let's give it a shot. Let's see who is the smartest person. What's the first one? Again?
Speaker 2:What happens when my children's father passes away. My husband and now it's for me to continue the legacy of what their father implemented and stood for. I have a 14 year old son, 18 year old daughter. My husband was a positive and supportive African-American man who made such an impact on our kids.
Speaker 1:So the first question was sorry, I got the heat on here. The first question was when my husband passes away and I have three children, what do I do to carry on his legacy? He's a very, very strong African American man. First, I want to say that I want to extend my sincerest condolences. A good man is worth his weight in diamonds, and if you had one, you had something that was priceless, and a good man to me who is a father is as good as it gets, and then one who does what he needs to do in the community.
Speaker 1:I mean, these are all the things that I aspire to be, so I can only admire the brother who you were fortunate enough to spend time with. But I'll start by saying, by keeping his memory alive, what you're doing is you're allowing your children to tap into their heritage. To me, you are helping them find their identity that they need in order to stay grounded. When a loving, committed parent passes away, our children find themselves talking to him or her as if they are a deity unto themselves, a guardian angel, and the actions of, in this case, their father. They have questions that they may assign to him as having the answers. The challenge is that he may not have had the answers where he alive, and so it's imperative that you keep his memory alive, coming to you, incarcerated, to ask I'm coming to you in a second, ambrosia, I really appreciate your question. Keep the memory alive and don't put him or you in a position where the expectations extend beyond the capacity of your children to truly internalize, meaning that they should revere him, they should miss him, because that's how they feel, but they could also put a great deal of pressure on themselves to be like someone who never really existed. We are all wrought with flaws I'll call it a patina and in those fractures that we have, that's where the beauty of who we are is best seen. And just because he is covered in the shroud of passing, it doesn't erase the humanity that he had. And it is all too easy for those of us who miss him to make him something that he was not, because there's a comfort in that. The problem. The problem is that we could set our children up to think that they could or should be something that did not exist, and that's not fair to them or him. Tell the stories of the things that he's done to make a great life for you and yours, but by no means should you make him into something that he was not. Nobody needs that. Nobody needs that. Okay, thank you. I'm going to go to incarcerate it. And then kids in college. I'm going to come to that in a second. I'm coming back to you in a second.
Speaker 1:My father was incarcerated when I was 17. I remember getting the call. I was a senior in high school, 17 or 18. I was a senior in high school and I was cutting my hair. I was in my bathroom in our project and my father called me. I used to have a pink phone. I don't know why my mother's bottom is pink. I had a pink phone long cord and so the phone. I would bring the phone into the bathroom while I was cutting my hair just in case somebody called, because, you know, if you missed a call, you really missed it, and this is before there was like an answering machine. Even so, I was in the bathroom, cut my hair, I was getting ready to go to a game, a basketball game actually, and I was cutting my hair and my father called me. He didn't call me very often.
Speaker 1:Okay, my father had called and he said are you sitting down? I never spoke in a disrespectful way to my father, I just didn't. Probably I was afraid of him more than anything. But yes, I was sitting down and I thought what a dumbass question. Like what In my head? I don't. It stayed in my head. I thought what a dumbass question. I mean, I was cutting my hair. I didn't know what to say, and so I said yes, I am, and he said something happened last night.
Speaker 1:Now, then, at that time he was a heavy drinker and he made his share of very bad decisions, very bad decisions. And so he asked me if my mother was there Now. He and my mother had not been together since I was five, so it was 12 years, I mean the majority of my life, and in terms of my day to day he wasn't, it wasn't part of it, not much. But he's still my father and I still had a peculiar affection for him, wanted him to be something. So I said she's not here. He said all right, well, you're going to find out that I had something happen last night. And he started to tell me what happened and involved a gun and a discharge and something or other, and somebody got shot. And there's that. He said I'm probably going to have to go away for a little while.
Speaker 1:And I just thought how selfish at the time. Two younger brothers and two younger sisters are very young and I just thought if he had just kept his ass home, wouldn't be in a situation, but couldn't tell him anything. So he did what he wanted to do. And now we're here. So my reaction to him being incarcerated was I was pissed at him. I just thought the shit was selfish. I just felt like he should have kept his black ass home Should have just been with his kids and just done what he was supposed to do, but he didn't. So for me and I'm telling the story for the reason that just because someone's incarcerated, that doesn't determine how the child is responding to that incarceration. It doesn't mean that they look at him like oh, so sad you're gone, because, especially if kids are old enough and they know what he did or didn't do, they're like yo, what, the like really what, what, what? And so there's this peculiar excuse me intersection of emotions where on the one hand they're sad but on the other hand they're mad and those hands get switched around.
Speaker 1:I remember the first time I went to visit him my youngest sister was very young, still in diapers and I remember going and them on hitching her diaper. I remember thinking damn. And I remember being angry with him, really really angry with him, really angry with him. But again because of out of fear or respect or whatever, I just didn't say anything about it. I remember sitting in the waiting room trying to act like this shit was normal, like sitting in a waiting room at a prison. I just didn't seem like everyone was just all sitting around like like we're in doctor's office waiting room, but we're not when a prison, and I know why he's here. He's not a political prisoner. He didn't do something amazing. He wasn't trying to save a child. He wasn't being a good dude. He wasn't standing up for his family. He wasn't defending anybody. He's at a bar. He's at a bar. And so I didn't. As he was gone, I wasn't thinking that, I was sad about it, I was angry. So so let's see. Yeah, so I think the first thing you have to do is you have to see how your son feels about it. Man, she talked to him.
Speaker 1:I think I went to visit my father twice in prison and it wasn't because my grandmother didn't push me hard to go see him like hard, like hard, hard to go see him. I just thought I didn't do this. He's warned many times not to act like this and he did it. And now look, everybody, babies, but diapers being popped open. We're here. When I went, I didn't feel. I didn't feel like I had lost a political prisoner. I was like this selfish man has a lot of freedom. I'm not a good person. I'm not a good person. I'm not a good person. What´s hard? I'm not a good person. I was 25 pieces.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine, I can't imagine this. He knows me, that's it. He knows me. He knows me you as somebody. Engage someone who's in your son's life, you know. Engage them to ask him questions about how do you feel about why your father's in prison? How do you feel about your father being in prison? I don't agree with Forza and Child to go visit their parent who's in prison.
Speaker 2:That's some rough stuff right there.
Speaker 1:That right there is rough. I was 17, 18. I was 18. That's rough, sitting there and what's smart. What'd you do today? More than you you. We can talk about college applications. Come on, man, I think you have to talk to your child. I don't think that you, as a mom, should be made to feel guilty. Don't turn him into something that he's not one way or the other. Let the circumstances become real. I don't want you feeling compelled to overstate or understate what happened. Talk to your child, talk to your son, and let that be the conversation.
Speaker 1:There are so many kids in our schools whose kids or whose parents are in prison or have been in prison. Each one of them has a different reaction. Some are proud, some are downright proud. They feel like their father, in most cases, did what he had to do and he was taking care of the family, so for them it's cool. Others feel like here we go again, because in many cases this is a habitual thing. So all their life this dude's been going out in and out of prison, so they're not cool with that.
Speaker 1:I mean, kids get tired of the foolishness too. Kids look up and like this shit is old, like it's just old, it's embarrassing. They want to go to a football game and look up and see their dad in the stands. So they want to go to a football practice even and see their dad over there practicing I mean coaching. They don't want to always have somebody else's father take them home or pick them up or somebody else buy them a piece of pizza or to tell them about girls or boys or whatever their situation is. Nobody want that. So I think you have to give them, your son, the space to be what it is that he's going to be and to internalize that the way he wants to internalize it.
Speaker 1:If your son does not want to go visit his father in prison, do not make him. Do not make him. Your job is not to make a man who committed a crime, likely against our community, feel good. It's just not what it is. Think of the child.
Speaker 1:As someone who was that child, I could have gone without going to prison to visit my father. I definitely. I definitely could have gone two or three lifetimes without doing that shit. Definitely I would have been fine. I could have watched it on TV. Even now, when I'm asked to go visit and I'm asked to go speak in prisons, it's a rough. It is rough, I don't know. I mean I go because they ask me to go, but I'm not going to sit here in a lie to you and tell you like I'm like, yeah, let's go, like I'm going to Ling Livingston College or Livingston University or Livingston College or Howard University. I'm not, I'm going to prison. This is not okay. I'm not, I'm not okay, don't.
Speaker 1:If he wants to go, sis, then that's him making that decision. If you now here's the one thing I want to say to you you are still his mother and so if you feel that he is not a quick to go, you are not obligated. He's 12. He's 12. So I don't know the particulars of your situation and I don't want to be seen as telling you that you should or shouldn't. I'm saying that you have the latitude to make the to make the bigger decision, and the bigger decision is to decide what you think is best for your son, for your son, and I don't know what that is, because I don't know him and I don't know you and I don't know his dad.
Speaker 1:But I do want you to understand. There's not a single answer. I do want you to understand there's not a single answer. Every man who goes to prison doesn't doesn't deserve to disrupt the lives of everybody anymore. Maybe he needs that timeout and we need to leave his ass there to get that timeout and maybe he'll cut this shit out. Maybe maybe he'll stop and he'll start to consider somebody other than himself and maybe his son won't ever have to have this conversation with him again and maybe he'll find whatever it is he needs in prison to get his life right. Because I'm not going to sit there and act like these cats are heroes, because they're not. They're not A lot of nice dudes, a lot of cool, funny people, but enough is enough.
Speaker 2:We're good, we don't need anybody else committing crimes in our communities.
Speaker 1:So, that's that. Uh, so people just asked the question about, um, us having our kids in college. Uh, what are some of the challenges that we see? One of the biggest challenges, honestly, is recognizing that it could go miserably wrong. They're gone and when they're gone, they can make whatever decisions in my pleasure. Um, they can make whatever decisions they want to make, and those decisions are, by and large, life or death. They can use drugs, they can have unprotected sex, they can go out somewhere. They ain't supposed to be keeping.
Speaker 1:My most of the time that most young people are in college, they're underage and so the the pull to drink, uh, illegally. I know we don't act like it's illegal to drink before 21, but in most states it still is illegal to drink before you're 21. So there's that, and anytime somebody has to sneak to do something, they tend to do the most ridiculous version of it, just the most dumb ass thing. So how many times did those of us who had the opportunity to go to college, how many times did you see some girls wedged between a toilet and a wall in her covered in her own vomit, only to wake up the next day? Everyone's laughing about how funny that was. I mean all the things that I saw while in college, I fear my sons already have done or will do, um, so I feel like y'all do I? I get concerned. Uh, you know, there are so many people who I want to say it the way I'm thinking it teased my wife and me. Oh, oh oh. You empty nesters Like, oh yeah, y'all gonna have a lot of fun. Empty nest. My ass, this is the hardest parenting that I've ever done. This is not even close to bassinets or stand up all night crying or or or, uh, stomach issues. They can't drink the formula that you get and so you got to go buy. That was that for me. This, this I forgotten what kind it was we had even at two, even at Sam's. It was like $50 for like.
Speaker 1:I mean that easy grounding your sons or daughters, or shouting at them, or making them feel guilty when they're a little babies, that's easy. That is easy. Sending somebody 1500 miles away and tell them don't do dumbass things, don't do dumbass things. That's hard, that's really hard. That's really hard Because guess what Spoiler alert they're gonna do all the dumbass things you told them not to do. And here's the bigger spoiler alert they're gonna act like they discovered it, they're gonna act like they're the first person.
Speaker 1:Oh weed, it ain't that bad, it's natural, right, right. Y'all definitely invented that, because they weren't talking about the third eye when I was in college and they definitely weren't talking about tuning in and turning ours whatever the hell they said in the 60s and on, back and back and back. And bad habits don't start when you're 18 years old anymore, the only before. Um, it's just not the case. We've been at this for a while. We've been at this for a long while. People raising kids, and so we act like just the rest of y'all, like just hope, just hope, like you hope that it's gonna go the way it's supposed to go and they're gonna come out here better people, preferably with degrees, preferably with degrees. Alright, got a couple more questions before we go.
Speaker 2:Fifth grade teacher has a student in her classroom that is a child of a single mother. A child is very interested in learning, but the parent is not interested in participating Breaks the teacher's heart. How do you handle that?
Speaker 1:Great question From a fifth grade teacher. She has a child who has a single mom. She says who'sthe kid really wants to learn, but the parent breaks thebreaks it. Now that I canthat I can do that one I got. There are a lot of ways that you can actually do that. You can engage the child's learning. One building the trust with the child.
Speaker 1:Believe it or not, kids listen to teachers in many cases as much, if not more, than they do with their own children I mean their own parents. Alright, so if you are a teacher and you have children in your class who you're concerned that the influence of their parents have, I'm just here to tell you that in many cases, you have more influence than their actual parents have. Therefore, you can create opportunities both before school, after school and on the weekends to create, to create opportunities for him to learn so you can keep him after school. He can help you clean up your room. You can give him extra homework or some assignments. There are plenty of ways for you to do that. Work with him during lunch, unless, of course, you're in a teacher's union, in which case you can't work with kids during lunch because it's a duty-free lunch and you would get grieved by your own union. Sorry, my bad, I couldn't help myself, but the rest of you could work with the children during lunch and work with them after school. Work with them on the weekends, if you know there's a sport that he's interested in and you could coach it. Coach it and or you can identify individuals or organizations in your community who could provide some after school support. And, most importantly, keep building a trust with him. Keep building the affection with him. Let him know that you got his back. Don't put yourself between him and his mom, because that's just not wise and it's not helpful to you, because, as much as you love him, you got a year with him and she's got the rest of her life. Don't create a dissonance that you can't in some way overcome later on, when he's in the sixth grade and you're still teaching fifth grade. I hope that helps.
Speaker 1:Alright, so, near an end, and my sons are home from school and they have a friend over he's like another son, and then they're bringing another one over who's like another son. So I think the six of us are going to go eat and I will go back into being my novice parent self, where I don't know the answers and I yell and I curse and I get angry and I get hurt and I do all the other things that all the other parents who have sat in my office have done. I do all of them and I will talk them down and aces. You know I got it, but you know, calling him in an effort may not be the best idea. Alright, one more, go ahead. One more question? Yes, I will, patrice, I will. So all those same things that they do did I will do. Hopefully not tonight, though. Hopefully we just have a peaceful dinner. Go ahead, patrice. I got to learn how to invite people.
Speaker 3:Let me see, let me see, I tried it. Let me see if I can invite Patrice.
Speaker 1:Go live with Patrice. Patrice decline. Patrice must be getting her head done. Sorry about that. So she says disrespectful parents on your campus. How do you deal with them? Not this, sadly, I've done many times, but I don't know that I've been successful, so I don't know that.
Speaker 3:I can be considered an expert in this, but I've dealt with many, many, many many times.
Speaker 1:Depends on them how disrespectful they are. If they're disrespectful to the point of violence, then call the police, but if the disrespect means that they communicate in all caps in these unabomber length emails, you know what I'm talking about. It's like oh my God, joe, and then in that email they call you every name in the book and accuse you of doing everything but being a child of God. Those you know. I don't tend to respond to long emails. If you feel like you can have a meeting with them, you should be able to meet them, but never on the phone.
Speaker 1:And if you're an administrator, meet with another administrator in the room. If you're a faculty member, then make sure. Verbal cursing out in front of the office. Okay.
Speaker 3:Well, been there, done that many times and I'm telling you that nobody has the right to come up in your school and talk like a goddamn fool. I don't care how many kids they have in the school, I don't care. I don't care who is the right person. They know or don't know, I don't care who they're going to call, I don't care.
Speaker 1:I told one parent, you know because I know that their child is never wrong. You're an assistant principal Okay, so cool. Yeah, if you're an assistant principal, then it's your job to make sure this building stays safe.
Speaker 3:What you need to recognize is that when people, when your office staff or custodians or faculty or paras, when the people you work with, see somebody coming up there acting like they got no damn sense, they're looking at you like so what you're going to do about it? Because they want to know if they're safe. You got to make sure they're safe.
Speaker 1:Look, I will call the police fast. You can say Jackie Robinson, and I won't think twice about it.
Speaker 3:Come get them. I want to have a parent go off screaming. I mean shrill Ron. This time, ron, this time she came in. She met with the principal Excuse me. She met with the principal and you know I supervise the principals among the principals, and so she wanted me to meet with me and I was like, all right, cool, you know. I figured I could sit down and talk to the assistant and work some things out, and she was convinced that we had purposefully denied her fourth grader the break-home work.
Speaker 1:Every other fourth grader got the homework except for her son, and when I asked her is it possible that your son lost it Because it's online? We gave you a hard copy, but it's actually online too. She was convinced that we had it out for her and our kids.
Speaker 3:I had never met the system. I had never met the system. I didn't have an issue with her. But I said to her okay, here's the deal. Every other child in our entire district who's?
Speaker 1:in the fourth grade got this. You're saying your child is the only one that didn't get it. It didn't happen. Let's call it a mulligan. Put it behind us. Let's just get this. I'll just get it. I'll show you how to get it. We'll address the credit thing. You know it's fourth grade.
Speaker 3:We'll address the grade thing later. She won't let it go. She wouldn't let it go. I said no, but you can have it.
Speaker 1:Now he's behind. Every time I gave her something, she gave me another reason that she was pissed, so every problem I felt like I was solving she just took it to another level. So I say to you as a system principal, once you recognize the conversation is becoming circular like every time you offer up an opportunity for the issue to be resolved and they bring up another issue you've reached a point where it's just not going to get better, it's only going to get worse. So my strong suggestions in the conversation, hey mom.
Speaker 3:I appreciate you coming in.
Speaker 1:I see that this conversation is not yielding the outcome that you want.
Speaker 3:I've given you the very best answer that I can. I appreciate you. Have a nice day.
Speaker 3:Oh, in this case, I wasn't enough for her. She wanted to keep going. She stops her on the screen. You got a whole school full of children. They can hear this person up at the front of the building screaming.
Speaker 3:So I'm asking if you, you know, please keep your voice down. You're going too far, you're doing too much. It's never necessary, it's never necessary. So I explained to her that you know I'm not talking to you in this way and I won't have you talking to me this way. And she says I fight dudes. I said what did you just say? She said I fight dudes.
Speaker 3:And I said this is not a conversation Either of us need to be having. There's a door that brought you in and take you out. Let's please leave it that way. Now you can't be threatening staff and not me or anybody recognizing that my staff is watching me, so they want to see how this is done. She wouldn't let me go, please. We're disbatch.
Speaker 3:She came and she left in cuffs over four grade assignment, over break. That's about me. You should wait. Ok, so I'm not gonna tell others. Um, sorry, but I did say I didn't know why. She said as an administrator, you do not have the responsibility to deal with people who don't want to have a reasonable conversation. Listen, I get it Sometimes, many times, schools. We're wrong. We're just wrong. We thought we did it this way and it didn't go that way. We just apologize to see what we could do to move forward. It happens. It happens all the time. We're humans, we're not there to do it wrong, but sometimes it happens there are physicians who prescribe the wrong medication or do something. I mean just humans, right, that's what this is.
Speaker 3:But you, as an administrator, you as an educator no, you ain't got to put up with that mess. Nobody gets to talk to you like that. No one has the right to curse at you. Who goes to somebody's job and curses at them? I mean, you can't go to the airport and do that. The TSA will grab your ass up for real. The poor starting will go ahead. Go to LaGuardia and cuss at that person behind that counter. I dare you and I'll do the countdown before people start descending from the ceiling dragging your ass out. So what makes you think you can go to somebody's school? I mean, come on, man Especially people here trying to help you Stop Be mad or recognize that's not your baby's father there, that's your son's principal. So stop, don't talk to people like that.
Speaker 1:You don't want them talking to you like that. There's that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know. So this is a big one. A lot of times what payoffs will do is if two kids got into trouble.
Speaker 1:They'll say I want to know what happened to other kids. Well, the law is very clear.
Speaker 3:You can't tell them, even if you wanted to. And in some case, let me be honest, I want to tell, Like in some cases I want to be like look, I suspended them but what I would have done, I can't say that because you just can't, because they have rights and you can't do it and their kids, and so stop. And what difference does it make what happened to somebody else's child? Grow up. Just worry about yours. Just worry about yours for real.
Speaker 3:Just worry about yours If you is what it is and what are we talking about? Suspension? So they go home for a day or two, whatever. Then they come back to school. That's it. That's all. That's all that happened. What are you doing? Stop. You're making it too much. I finished it. You're an administrator. I will say this to you and we'll have a different conversation with administrators, because this was more so about parenting, but I'll say this as an administrator.
Speaker 1:No one gets to talk to you in the old way. It's just not the way this thing happens.
Speaker 3:No one, because you don't go on their job talking to them this way. What my hope is is that you respect the families with whom you work and that you'll find that, more often than not, when you respect the families with whom you work, they'll respect you. They don't always have to like everything you do, because that's just not what it is. It's not going to happen that way.
Speaker 3:But if they understand that, your goal is to do the right thing, to do right by their child on graduation day, a lot of the bad stuff will fly back in the rearview mirror and you won't have to think about that anymore. So as long as you know you're doing your best, as long as you know you're doing what you need to do, everything else happens after that. All right, folks, thank you for joining us tonight. For no Dumb Questions, I'm going to go take all these boys out for dinner and then get back to the rest of the night. Y'all take it easy. Remember, the smartest person in the room is not the one with the most answers, but the one with the best question. Thanks so much. Good night.