There is no room for bad behaviour in this house

A school is a hunting ground, but every hunting ground has sticky willies: the climber that’s covered with hooked hairs.

When we send our kids to school, they return, not only with knowledge, but stuff we wish they would have left there. 

Here’s a list of some sticky willies.

VIRUSES

I know this much is true. Unless your kids are home-schooled, know that every couple of months, or days, if you are unfortunate, they will return home with a bug.

As is the nature of such things, rest assured that they will be passed onto you and yours. Woe unto the last ‘contractee’ sneezing, because they will suffer its severity down to the final strain. Why, it has been “worked on” by previous “contractees”, to an extent that it may require WHO intervention.

What’s a parent to do when their kid returns home from school with bugs? Think of it in a positive way, that you are working your immune system.

Making it stronger. Give it three days…and three score handkerchiefs. However, if the flu gets you, like it does me, take a shot before the ah-choos hit your family.  

BEDBUGS

There is a bedbug outbreak in the country. These baddies are not respecters of addresses. They are equal opportunistic deployers. Bedbugs can be found in State House and in that mabati room in the slums.

These bummers hitchhike on PSVs, school buses, schoolbags, sweaters and jackets, and cause you and yours private, and sometimes public grief and shame. 

Speaking of hitchhiking, if one pupil lends a ride to a bedbug from wherever, man, you’re done. Plus, the fact that a bedbug survives for a year without sustenance can be enough reason for any neat freak to hit the panic button. 

What to do when your kid returns home with a bedbug: “No comment.” That’s a political answer. Um, I don’t want to blow our, er, bedcover.

Okay, call the exterminator…multiple times. One bedbug usually means there are one too many lurking in your crib.

BRUISES

These can be gotten in the playground, or in the myriad interactions that schoolchildren have on a daily basis.

They are not normally serious, and may not require a hospital visit, but if you are in doubt or feel like there’s more to the bruise than meets the eye, follow it up with your child before taking it up with the head teacher.

My mama never gave me an easy ride when I returned home with battle scars. While bathing me, she cleaned my bruises thoroughly, ignoring my whimpers.

My daughter, like all girls, I guess, is the type to freak out when she imagines a pimple on her pretty face.

“Dah-dee?” she’ll ask, “Can you see it?”

“Only with a microscope,” I’ll answer after squinting to see her imagined agony.

What to do when your child returns home with a bruise: think like mama, but act like a medic.

ATTITUDE

Kids are good at testing how far they can go with you, and before you know it, they have you wrapped around their pinky.

Our daughter does that sometimes. Trying to bring home attitude she picked up in school. That is before, Bernie Mac style, I put her right back in her place with my tough love act. I’m the man, man.

What to do when your child returns home with attitude: change that soiled diaper, by any means necessary, because they can’t go anywhere in life while reeking of doo-doo.   

Other pupils’ property

Back in my old hood, we used to say pickpockets were skilled in the art of OPP, Other People’s Property.

Pudd’ng knows it is unacceptable to return home from school with anything that’s not hers, whether she borrowed it or not. I know that if seeds like these are not uprooted, we may end up with rotten fruits. 

Daily, I go through our daughter’s schoolbag when she returns home from school. If I find an alien eraser or pencil inside Pudd’ng’s schoolbag, I grill her about it, and then I pronounce judgment: return it and apologise. 

What to do when your child returns home with OPP: throw the whole book at them like you’re the DPP, or else that might end up being their future career.

ALERT:

No nonsense: When she tries to bring home attitude she picked up in school, I put her right back in her place with my tough love act.