Princesses vs. Zombies
[Ed. Note: I feel I need to preface this post to say that we do, in fact, love our school, our teachers, and our new principal. They have been nothing but understanding and supportive of all of our kids! But occasionally, it does seem we catch them momentarily off-guard.]
Friday I got a call from our school’s principal. Our Kindergartener had been sent to the office for the third time last week. During the course of our conversation about my daughter’s infractions, our concerns that the behavior problems seem to be escalating, and how we might handle this situation, the principal, Dr. P, wanted to share with me exactly how Lucy was spending the time in her office.
Dr. P: Lucy has to sit in my office while she completes her work. She did a good job focusing on her task and following directions so when she was done I let her take a break and color some pictures. First, she drew some pictures of zombies.
ME: (with a little laugh) Yeah, that sounds about right.
Dr. P: Well, I asked her if she saw zombies on TV and she told me no.
I could hear Dr. P give a tiny sigh of relief. Thank the gods Lucy answered “no” because Dr. P had sounded a bit taken back by these pictures.
Dr. P: (in a brighter, more reassuring voice) …and then she started drawing more normal things like a princess in a tower. You know, more typical things for 5 year-old girls.
ME: Well, actually Dr. P, zombies are kind of normal for us.
Perhaps I should have kept that little skeleton in our family closet? (no pun intended.) Hey, at least I made no mention of the pirates, monsters, genetically mutated animals, and robots that routinely show up around the house!
Dr. P: Oh…I see. Well, then..
I spent the next few minutes doing my best to sound like a “normal” parent who is relatively sane and very concerned about my daughter’s behavior. I was hoping to convince her so we would not get a call from DFS (Division of Family Services) over the weekend.
But truth be told, I’d pick zombies over princesses any day. Well, unless is was a zombie princess. Or a really cool warrior princess that could defeat zombies…
Share this:
Discover more from Autisable
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Something doesn’t sound right here. Having been married to a teacher until retirement, there’s usually more to the story than just drawing pictures of zombies. I raised a kid who drew worse than zombies in all his art classes, and usually got A’s. I’m wondering if the powers that be are A. Getting off on a power trip, or, B. The Zombies are doing something, like to someone in the class. Is this the whole story? If it’s the whole story, it’s easy to deal with. She can draw zombies at home, and leave the school zombies alone. No one worse for the wear. I’ve never heard of a situation like this where there wasn’t something else involved, like a zombie representing another child. If that’s not the case, then they are just plain weird, but rather than teach her how to get into a pissing match this early in life, I’d just encourage the drawing at home. P.S. I’ve saved some of my son’s artwork over the year as he is an artist, and trust me, at the age of 34, he’s never been in a fight in his life. I think it had alot to do with stuff he saw in movies, etc., and with being bullied. It was a good way to get his feelings out without dealing with his anger in other ways.
THIS NEEDS TO BE A GAME 😀
I would have said, “I’ll be sure to instruct my female child to draw princess zombies in the appropriate princess zombie setting.”
“really cool warrior princess that could defeat zombies…”
…why is this not a toy yet?
My 4 year old runs around the house with his pow pow (a broken water gun) and “gets all the zombies.” He does it a lot and its all based off some zombie game on the iPhone. I didn’t realize this’ll be an issue later. It’ll probably be ok if he’s drawing Thor or captain America…but not zombies huh? Ah well.
That’s cool. I always worry that my son will give away our conversations at our house. We might get a call from CPS too. My bf plays games like those on his video games and my son tends to like zombies and stuff like that too so I side with you on that one. He also likes princesses too which is a sore point with his dad. He likes that new Sophia the princess show and Dr McStuffins on disney. I think kids should be able to be who they want to be without preconcieved notions of what is gender specific. I am a girl and I don’t care for princess stuff to much myself.
april
Zombies kick princesses’ butts.
LOL
I had dark thoughts as a young child, and I drew all sorts of dead things.
They put me in a room and had me play with toys to see if I was normal, and I was in one respect at least.
I did bury a bunch of soldiers in the ground, however…