The Scraping Incident

Kids can be crazy. We all know this. They can do things that just make you ask in total bewilderment, “what were
you thinking?” As a mother of two this has happened to me many times
over the years. But, honestly, never to the degree it happened last
month.

Here is one of these incidents where, as a parent, you would just like to curl up in a ball and hide. Or run away and let someone else parent in your place. After many conversations and lots of back and forth with parents and kids I am ready to put this one out in the world for all of you to mull over and do what you want with. Because, dudes, I am so done with thinking about it.

Picture this:

My beautiful, spirited, fun-loving 7 year-old walks into the house after school and says to me, “Mommy, this hurts.” And she is pointing to an angry looking scratch on her forehead. “What IS that?” I ask, pulling her close. And upon further inspection I see there are more. Many more. She has scrapes up and down her arms, some of them quite deep, and more on her forehead and cheeks. What is going on??

My Girl Post-Scrapes.

And then I see that, in fact, they are not just random scratches but markings, letters and numbers and symbols. Now I’m freaking out a bit. I see that on her forehead, right in the middle, was etched a large “1-“. WTF?? After inspecting further I ask, “What happened? How did you get these marks?” Her answer? “We did it to each other.” Oh dear.

So, here is the scoop as I understand it:

The school had an assembly (ticket on the fast train to boredom) and the kids were getting antsy. They started to whisper and plan. They created a “club” of the four of them sitting together. As part of this club they decided they needed something to identify each of them as a member. Because, you know, they might not recognize each other otherwise! Jeesh. Then they found a small object on the floor and decided to scratch these identifiers into each other’s skin. This, my friends, seemed like an AWESOME idea to a group of 7 year-olds.

Unfortunately for them, the teacher and Vice Principal were not quite as impressed. The scraping was so bad on a few of the kids that there was some blood. But my daughter was the only one lucky enough to have them on her face. After a stern talking to at school the kids were sent home to communicate what happened to their parents. The stories definitely varied depending on which child you spoke with but the theme was the same; there intention was not to hurt and they were sorry.

Finally, the scrapes have healed and the incident is in the past. But I have to wonder, what the hell could be next and how am I ever going to be ready for it?!