A Haiku of thoughts…

I don’t write Haiku poetry, but my husband does.  As a matter of fact, he writes wonderful poems and even had a collection of them published.  This post isn’t about that.  This post is about my jumbled thoughts on everything that has been happening around me and how I need to focus.  Friday my oldest had a moment of silence at her school before I ever even got to hug her and let her know about what happened.  Okay.  I was still in shock myself.  Monday she was told to write her feelings down in a journal about what happened.  Feelings that she didn’t really understand herself.  One girl wrote a few pages and volunteered to read it in front of the class.  Apparently it was enough to make her teacher cry.  Hmmm.  Okay.  Not really necessary, but let’s give the teacher the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe they were told to do something like that.  After dinner tonight, my 6th grader was quietly putting her puzzle together on the table and suddenly remembered she was assigned extra homework.  She had to write a Haiku about the tragic event.  What the WHAT???  Did I hear you correctly?  I’m sorry, did you just say you had to write a Japanese poetic form on death?  Forgive me if I go all Scorpio on the teacher, but enough is enough.  Please, please move away from this topic.

In a nutshell, I told her that there was no media exposure about this topic in my home and that all children deal with things like this in their own way.  My child processes things differently than most.  She might appear fine, but in a few nights, she will have picked all the skin off her fingers worrying about things that may or may not ever happen to her.  I found the assignment to be insensitive.  Maybe some of you think I’m overreacting.  Maybe you agree completely.  I would never try to educate your child on topics that might not be discussed in your own home.  Now let me go prepare my lesson on the Mayan apocalypse so I can tell your kids the end of the world is coming.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”  ~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

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