Redford gets so excited about the treat that he’ll get when he loads up into the car that sometimes he doesn’t wait for me to open the door before he tries to jump in.\u00a0 He’s so pretty.<\/p>\n
This morning, he did just that, and while I was fretting over his noggin, I dropped Violet’s leash.\u00a0 She seized the opportunity to sprint toward the road, which of course made me freak out and run after her.\u00a0 And then I remembered.\u00a0 That’s her game.\u00a0 As long as you chase her, she’ll run.\u00a0 So I turned my attention back to my special needs son.\u00a0 Sure enough, Violet came strolling back up the driveway and jumped in the car.<\/p>\n
I was reminded of this kid, Michael, who I had my third year teaching in NY.\u00a0 He was a handsome little guy, always in uniform:\u00a0 navy pants, yellow button-down, navy tie.\u00a0 (Some public schools in NY—mostly low socio-economic schools—opt to be uniform schools.)\u00a0 Smart too.\u00a0 But Michael was a desk-thrower.\u00a0 And he cursed A LOT.\u00a0 He’d have these fits where I’d have to evacuate the rest of the kids from the class and let him wreck the joint.\u00a0 And sometimes he’d get mad and leave the classroom.\u00a0 The first few times I ran after him.\u00a0 I was worried he might hurt somebody or run out in the street and get hit by a bus or something.\u00a0 About the fifth time, I don’t know, the novelty had worn off maybe, and it took me a little longer to follow him.\u00a0 When I got into the hall, he was peeking back through the double doors to make sure I was coming.\u00a0 That’s when I realized, he didn’t want to run away; he wanted to be chased.\u00a0 Dogs and fourth-graders, man.<\/p>\n
P.S.\u00a0 I used to talk to Michael’s grandmother every day after school.\u00a0 One Monday, I went out to tell her that he had a GREAT day.\u00a0 I told her, “He was calm and focused.\u00a0 He didn’t curse or have any tantrums.\u00a0 He did all his work.”\u00a0 She said, “Yeah, he started anti-psychotic meds on Saturday.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Redford gets so excited about the treat that he’ll get when he loads up into the car that sometimes he doesn’t wait for me to open the door before he tries to jump in.\u00a0 He’s so pretty. This morning, he did just that, and while I was fretting over his noggin, I dropped Violet’s leash.\u00a0 … Continue reading The Game<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animules","category-teaching","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9119,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions\/9119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}