I HAD A KID, NOT A ROBOT!

By: Mia L. Hazlett

5/9/12

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/05/first-grader-suspended-for-singing-im-sexy-and-i-know-it/

I was talking with my BFF yesterday and couldn’t believe what she told me.  I was telling her how my daughters had made up a dance to “I’m Sexy and I Know It,” by LMFAO.  I don’t particularly care for the song.  I basically listen to my iPod in the car and that song isn’t on there.  Point is, we don’t own the song, but because we breath we’ve heard it.  I am very conscience of what type of music my children listen to, as my parents were with me.  But they also don’t live in a bubble.  I’ve mentioned in other posts,  I pick my battles carefully.  My kids dancing around to a song that I don’t particularly care for is not going to send me into orbit.  Singing about being sexy and knowing it, is not going to be a punishable end to my kids’ routine.  So when she told me a first grader was just suspended from school for singing it on grounds of sexual harassment, I had to see for myself.

I believe schools are  no longer allowed to have kids in their classrooms.  Schools are no longer a place where our children can become anything but brainiacs.  They are now in business to produce the smartest kids that will move onto the best colleges.  Unfortunately, the child gets the human element crushed out of them and they are fed programming so they will function as a robot.  Now I am not at all bashing schools in anyway.  I sympathize with them.  I spent almost ten years in education and I understand why these stupid things have to occur.

We live in a society nowadays where parents don’t have to be responsible for the kids they bring into this world – everyone else has to be responsible for them.  I was cracking up when the mother mentioned the boy had sang this song before to the little girl, but this time  “he was shaking his booty.”  Why do I find this so funny?  Because that is the funniest word (booty) in the world to my six year-old right now.  Say “booty” and you will see her crumble into a fit of giggles, all the while repeating “booty.”   I find it perfectly okay.  Why?  Because she has one.  And I prefer she not call it an ass.

I really would like to know who pushed the issue here?  Because the label does not fit the school’s description of sexual harassment,  “must have negative effects on the learning or work of others.” According to this article, they were in a lunch line.  Was this girl so overcome by this boy’s shaking booty that she couldn’t eat, which led to her fainting while taking a test?  I highly doubt it.  I’m thinking after years of working with and raising kids, there was probably a little class clown looking for attention.  He sang and shook his little booty IN THE LUNCH LINE and someone tattled.  And I’m not looking to bash men, but some tend to be stupid, meaning highly unintelligent, when it comes to getting the attention of women they like.  I still experience the “pssst.”  Not from young little first graders, but GROWN-ass men.  The other day I was walking down the street and this man, maybe in his late twenties, looked me up and down, and said, “Riiiight,” followed by a wink.  Maybe this poor boy is just the victim of bad advice, “If you sing the sexy song and shake your booty, she’ll like you.”  Who knows?

The one way I’ve tried to contribute to the classroom, through my kids is ….get ready….talking to them.  Yup.  I talk to my kids.  Prior to them being in a classroom, they knew the difference between tattling and telling.  They knew what to walk away from and what they needed to speak up about.  That is my job as their mother.  I need to ensure that they can handle their well-being to the best of their ability when I am not around.  I have to know they can confidently handle conflict-resolution without it coming to blows.  The only way that is going to happen is if they do it, not if I jump in all the time and speak for them.  I’m not going to bash the parents’ of the little girl, because I don’t have the details as to how this little girl’s educational process was held up.  Had my daughter come home and told me that a boy was shaking his booty at her while singing the song, I would have told her to get used to it, followed by a reenactment of Wink Boy.

At some point we need to allow our children to be children.  I would love to know if any of these school officials simply asked the boy why he did it?  Are parents so sheltering these days, that schools must be forced to suspend a first grader for a little booty shaking?   He is at such a fragile age, that I feel these extreme measures have added one more robot to our society.  Instead of this being a learning opportunity for this child as to how to appropriately approach a girl he likes or just stand in the lunch line, he’s been punished and labeled. Do we really want little robots walking around?