nice penis

got your attention?

In an effort to be the best parents we can be we have started a gratitude list during diner.  One of my son's first moments of gratitude revolved around being grateful for his penis...........fish.  That is what he calls his weather loach fish.  Link below---yes they do look a bit like a penis.

penis pic (weather loach fish)

Full disclosure my family's dinner table conversation is often R rated.  We use words like penis and we sometimes talk about sex and drugs and rock and roll and use 4 letter words.  I am not saying that is right (or wrong) I am just hoping that you won't judge our parenting and I won't judge yours.

But more about penises.

As we roll towards the end of school the usual fun festivities are going on.  This includes the distribution of school yearbooks.  As usual after the yearbooks are distributed the kids are given time to sign each others.  Turns out my son is a bit of a Picasso (actually he has failed pretty much every fine arts class he has taken) and he added a bit of a flourish to his notes---a poorly drawn penis.  Sadly, my son was hardly original in this--much of the student body was drawing penises in each others yearbooks (I too have some in my yearbooks from yesteryear).  But my son gets caught by a teacher who sees his artwork in another kids yearbook the teacher is signing.  My son gets sent home from school along with 2 other aspiring artists.  Using some basic statistical methods analyzing his yearbook I would have to guess that 80-100 students were scrawling penises in yearbooks.  Punishing less than 5% of the students committing a crime creates a challenging parenting moment, and sends a poor message to the rest of the students (do the crime and let the usual suspects take the fall).

I want to support the school when they discipline my child.  I tell my son that because he is outspoken and loud he is liable to draw more attention to himself and therefore needs to have extra good behavior.  I tell him that drawing penises is juvenile.  But it is really hard to me to find a really good teaching point.  He didn't toss other kids under the bus for a victimless crime.  I agree with him on that.  He didn't fight about it, he took responsibility which I also agree with. 

Maybe there is a good teaching moment here for all of us.  Sometimes we as a society would benefit from being a bit more mellow, a bit less PC.  The teacher who saw the offending penis drawing could have just ignored it.  What damage would that have done?  What if people had either laughed or cringed or ignored Michelle Wolf's speech at the DC correspondents dinner?  Did it really deserve to be dissected and analyzed by every 'pundit' under the sun?  Did that help improve discourse in our country?  For crying out loud she was giving a roast toast--what do you expect?  For that matter what do you expect from middle school students at the end of the year with pens and yearbooks.

What can be as important as our behavior is how to choose to respond to other's behavior.  If you go to a political roast expect to get toasted and accept that as the cost of some laughs. If you give yearbooks to middle school kids expect some colorfully autographs.  If you don't like that then ignore it, and if that doesn't work for you then maybe you have to inspect everyone's yearbooks and send as many porn artists as you track down home.  But maybe seeing 25% of the student body in the vice principal's office might make you reassess your decision.  Sometimes the right thing to do is nothing at all.