Does this statue make me look fat?

Or to be more precise, does this statue make me look like a big narcissistic woman?

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I know, I know. I've been LMNarcissisticAO ever since I heard that term, myself!

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It seems that the mother of a darling seventh grade girl that I taught last year left a colleague/friend of mine a message asking why her daughter was not doing well in my friend's class.

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"Language arts has always been her best subject,

and she did extremely well on the TAKS test

(state-mandated achievement test) last year,

so I just cannot understand this . . . "

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When Julie returned her call this morning, it seems that despite her daughter's EIGHT zeros (hey, I said the child was darling -- I didn't say she was hard-working), the mother had another explanation for her child's poor performance:

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"I'm sure it's because of that teacher

she had last year . . . I can't remember her name,

but it was that big narcissistic woman --

I don't know how anyone learned anything in that

class from what I heard goes on in there . . . "

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Well, Julie knew exactly who she was talking about (that would be MOI!), but she played dumb and began to recite the names of our sixth-grade language arts teachers until she got to mine . . . Surprise! Surprise! Yes, it was moi!

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After we both quit laughing, I couldn't help but think of how sad it is that so many parents do not seem to hold their children accountable for . . . well, much of anything. Something I wrote a couple of years back for a church publication expresses my thoughts pretty well, so instead of reinventing the wheel, I'm just going to cut and paste the wheel:

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As most of you know, I don’t just preach, I also teach. (Each week, I spend Monday through Friday teaching middle school students the finer points of the English language.) Recently a co-worker told me that one of his students – a thirteen-year-old girl – hits him as often as she can on a daily basis. She also spits at him. She thinks both actions are funny. The sad thing is that when he spoke to her mother about this, the mother was furious at him for even suggesting that this is a problem. You see, the student is a Down’s Syndrome child.

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“She has the mind of a three-year-old!” the mother huffed, indignantly.

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Unfortunately, my colleague was unable to get the mother to realize that even three-year-olds need boundaries. Denying there’s a problem doesn’t help the situation and, more often than not, makes the behavior worse. As my friend said, “When she gets to the high school, hitting others is not only going to affect her targets, but will in all likelihood, eventually get her flattened by someone who doesn’t care that she has the mind of a three-year-old.”
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I see the same patterns repeated, of course, with my own students. Too often, whatever the problem of the day is, it certainly isn’t little Tamika’s fault or Juan’s fault. One parent went so far as to suggest that if her Christopher was misbehaving in class, perhaps my teaching wasn’t entertaining enough!

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Those of you who know me are chuckling right now, but the message we as parents send out to our kids when we always make excuses for their misbehavior and their poor choices is that nothing is ever their fault. And sending that kind of message is no laughing matter. In fact, it sets our kids up for a hard fall somewhere down the line.

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Until we teach our children that they are responsible for their actions and that, in turn, they must also accept the consequences of their choices, they will continue to do whatever they feel like doing, regardless of the effect they have on those around them or whether their actions and choices are in their own best interest or not.

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Perhaps the real problem is that we live in a society where adults aren’t willing to take responsibility for their actions. It’s always someone else’s fault – we blame our own parents, our siblings, the government, our neighbor, the man, the system, another ethnic group – anyone but ourselves.

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We would do well to learn from the apostle Paul, who, when talking about sinners, said something to the effect of, "You know, I’m one, too – in fact, I’m 'chief among sinners'” (KJV). Paul understood that until we take responsibility for our actions and admit the we are sometimes the problem, there can be no change, no hope, no new life.

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As for that mom's comments, like I told another co-worker, I don't think that believing I'm wonderful makes me narcissistic -- I prefer to think of myself as REAListic!

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(And yeah, that statue IS sitting on my desk at school. Right next to my tiara.)

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Have a fun weekend, sistas!

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And remember: We are ALL "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14)!

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Grins!

Pamm