The Time My Son Got It Right
- Karla Lee
- 53 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Every now and then I get confirmation that what I'm teaching my son is working. When he was authorized to self carry his epi pen in middle school, he knew to call me for any conversation or paper work that takes place outside of the classroom.
The phone buzzed in the middle of a meeting. I recognized the number. It was a school calling, but I wasn't sure which one. I tried to step away but by the time I excused myself, I missed the call. Second buzz, same number. This time I answered and and I heard a familiar voice on the other end of the line.
It was my son.
It was the beginning of seventh grade, and this was the year he was cleared to carry his own epinephrine. I had already met with the school nurse, did the paperwork the way you are supposed to, and once the form was signed off on by me and the prescriber, I sent it to school with him. Over the next several days, he forgot to turn it in. When the clinic called looking for the form, I told them it was in his backpack. I gave my permission for them to obtain it from him.
I pictured someone stepping into his classroom, collecting a piece of paper, done. Instead, my son was called down to the office. Once in the office, they asked him to sign something.
The rule that is always on repeat
Here is the rule in our house, the one I have said so many times it probably sounds like a broken record to my kids. Anything that happens outside of the classroom means an automatic phone call to me. Not sometimes. Not a maybe. Not only if it feels serious. Every time.
So when they slid a form across the desk and asked my son to sign it, he said the sentence I have been putting in his mouth for years.
I need to call my mom.
He called. I couldn't answer, because I was in right in the middle of a weekly meeting with my team. And here is the part that makes me the proudest: when he didn't reach me right away, he did not shrug and sign. He did not decide it was not worth the trouble. He held the line, and he called again.
The second time, I picked up. I listened. I understood what they were asking and why, and I told him yes, he could sign. He signed with my voice in his ear instead of a stranger's over his shoulder.
A boundary that is becoming his own
Nothing about that form was sinister. This is not a story about a villain. It is a story about a boundary that finally belonged to him instead of just to me.
I often think about what he was up against at twelve years old. An adult he is supposed to obey asked him to sign a document. Everything in a child's training says comply, be polite, do not make it weird. He did the harder thing. He paused a process that every signal told him to just get through, and he respectfully reached for me first.
She was just trying to do her job. But it could wait.
That is the whole project. Not raising a child who is afraid, but raising one who knows that his name on a page is his, and that he does not spend it alone in a room he was called into.
No child should ever feel comfortable moving through an administrative process outside of their classroom, not in an office, not even in the clinic, without calling a parent first.
Comfortable is the wrong feeling there. The right feeling is “I need to call my mom,” and then the patience to make the call twice if that is what it takes.
If you have been following along, I have been talking about how parents can protect their kids from being questioned or participating in administrative processes without parental consent. This is the proof that it works. You put the protection in writing, you teach the words, and then one ordinary day you find out the teaching held, in an office you were not standing in.
I have never been prouder of a signature I did not see.
If you want the rule I repeat, the words I use, and the exact email I send to keep my child from being pulled into anything without me, I keep all of it in Truly Yours. It is free to join.
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