I recently had a very bad experience with Wolf7 and am wondering what other parents of overly aware kids would have done in the situation.
He is in an Independent Study Program and we wanted to be involved in the science fair. Our program doesn't do one on it's own (well after this it does, but I'll get to that) so we were sent to a local elementary school to participate with their 3rd graders. Ten kids from the school fair would go on to the county science fair. K-3 gets no monetary awards at the county level and does not go on to state. The school fair does not give out any awards. So he set up his project at the school with the 29 or so other project from K-5, did the interview with the scientists and that would have been that, if Wolf was a "normal" kid.
He isn't though, not even close. He looked at the other projects just like I did. He KNEW he was going to county fair. His wasn't the best compared to the older kids, but he was definitely in the top 15% and 33% of the kids were going to county.
Then I got the email listing who was going on to county. Over half the kids on the list were the kids of the parents on the Science Fair Committee. In fact, to my knowledge, not one of their kids did not continue on.
I didn't tell Wolf. I couldn't. I mean how do you explain THAT to a kid who is emotionally 7 years old? How do you do it and not ruin their innocence, their trust in the system, their trust in adults to do the right thing? Yes, it's a lesson that needs to be learned, but not at 7 years old...
I ended up talking to his teacher and she contacted the county science fair about it, explaining that his project deserved to be at the fair and that she could understand why the school might have wanted to only send their students. The county fair said that it would be fine for our program to send him, so that's what we did. However we didn't tell him about that part. He thought he went on from the school fair.
He's thrilled, we set up at the science fair, and lo and behold the head of the school science fair committee walks up to us with a look that could kill an elephant. Here is a condensed version of the discussion which took place right in front of Wolf.
Woman: venomously "Interesting seeing you here."
Me: "Well Wolf's teacher thought his project merited going on so she contacted the county science fair committee about it. They said he should be here, so here we are."
Woman: growing visibly more upset by the moment "Oh really."
Me: feeling overwhelmed and flustered by her illogical animosity "Don't worry, we won't be going through your school anymore for the science fair anymore. It was a little disconcerting when all of the committee's kids got sent on to county."
Woman: Not even attempting to not look irate, not astonished that I would think that, but more along the lines of pissed that anyone had called them on it. "That is NOT how it happened. I'm going to go and tell the committee about your decision right now!" She storms off...
Wolf got an award, several of the kids from the school did not, so obviously his project deserved to be there. What really gets me though, is that we are talking about a 3rd grade science fair project here! Admittedly the school we went through is a high income area school, lots of scientists, this woman's kids both did projects that required expensive, esoteric, hard to come by scientific equipment, and so on, but at 3rd grade there is nothing to be gained, no further steps, the county fair is it. Wolf deserved to be there, he was thrilled by getting there and winning an award. How could she be so pissed about him being there? How could she dump all that nastiness with him right there?
Wolf asked what was going on, but I deflected the question and had to leave for the interviews. He asked me about it again later when we were viewing all the projects. I finally told him that even though I let him watch Star Wars and violent things, that there were some things that adults did that I don't feel are ok for kids to know about. That you can't unlearn certain lessons and that I wanted him to be a kid and be innocent of those things for as long as possible. Then I told him that if he remembered and asked me when he was 10 or 12 I'd tell him then. He was annoyed, but didn't argue.
So what would you have done, from start to finish if possible? I want to advocate for my son, but at the same time I really do feel that some lessons really need to wait for the emotional maturity to handle them if that can be managed. How do you deal with parents like that?
