When Your Kid Gets in Trouble At School

What I did after receiving an unexpected teacher email.

When I wrote my book, I worried about the inevitable times my kids would do unsavory things and people would whisper, “Wait — isn’t that the kid whose mom wrote the book on not raising assholes? HAHAHA!”

Well, two weeks ago was one of those times. But actually, it wasn’t mortifying. Because I now know that there is no such thing as a perfectly behaved kid, and that every child — no matter how they are raised or who their parents are — is going to make mistakes. That’s how kids learn. Also, social rules are really complicated, and often our kids do things that make us grimace but are actually perfectly reasonable things for kids to do if they haven’t yet learned exactly how the world works.

I’m going to share with you what happened two weeks ago after I received an email from one of my kid’s teachers. I asked for and received consent from my child to share this story with you as long as I didn’t disclose which kid it was, so I’m going to use gender neutral pronouns throughout the piece (and if you can figure out which kid it is… well… please keep that to yourself).

As soon as my kid walked through the door from school on November 18, I could tell something was up. I asked if everything was okay, and they told me they didn’t want to talk about it. I said, “Okay, well, I’m here if you change your mind and want to talk.” My child walked upstairs, and I went to my computer.

That’s when I saw The Email. Here it is, with some pronouns changed and names redacted for privacy (I’ve kept the teacher’s double spaces after periods for authenticity, even though it is killing me):

Good afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Moyer, I just wanted to let you know of an incident that occurred in my class this morning involving REDACTED and their Chromebook.  From across the room, I heard the Google Translate voice on REDACTED’S computer read out something rather inappropriate.  At that point, I took the Chromebook away from REDACTED and told them that their computer is to be used as a tool for their academics. …….. I have really enjoyed having REDACTED in my class thus far this year, and I want to continue developing a positive connection with them. REDACTED knows that I was planning on contacting you, so please let them know that you received my message.  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and happy and healthy Thanksgiving next week. Kindly, REDACTED. 

The first thought that screamed inside my head was WHAT THE HECK DID MY KID’S COMPUTER SAY??? My mind was going to the worst places. The absolute worst. But I knew I needed to stay calm and go to my child and start a conversation. So I took some deep breaths, knocked on my kid’s door, waited for the “come in” and walked inside.

Here’s as close as possible to the transcript of what was said, with some notes in brackets so you can understand my thought process. Afterwards, I’ll lay out my overall, more generalized approach to these kinds of conversations.