playing it cool

We had another meeting scheduled with Matt's guidance counselor today. It's the obligatory spring time meeting. I. Hate. Her. I can't help it, she has this power over me, every word out of her mouth makes me want to leap out of my chair, climb across the table and slap her up the side of the head. She has a bed attitude. That and she misprounces our last name every time.

Also, it is personal now. She sent me a letter a couple of weeks ago, in which she suggested that I might want to get myself some counseling to help myself cope with the "stress" I imagined Matt was feeling when she added another class to his schedule and after a few weeks I took it back out. Hahaha. You can imagine I went into this meeting with a very itchy trigger finger.

I took the guidance counselors angry/insulting letter, printed out a couple of articles on Asperger's from reputable web sites off the internet (All of which, naturally, supported everything I ever said or did) headed down to Staples and xeroxed a dozen copies of both the letter and the articles to pass out at this meeting. You know, just in case. Not that I was planning on challenging anyone ~ahem~ I just needed to go into this meeting boy scout prepared. In the meantime, the husband is bogged down at work, and really couldn't afford to take the afternoon off, but he came anyway, in order to keep me in line and make sure that the Middle School wouldn't feel the need to take out a restraining order on me. This would be a reasonable fear given my less than stellar history with conflict resolution and the adrenaline fueled condition I was experiencing going into this meeting.

Don't you know that 20 minutes into the meeting, I was telling the husband to calm down (he was threatening to call in the lawyers) while watching that angry vein throbbing on his red faced forehead. The husband settled back down, and I stepped in. I told the counselor I didn't want to have an adversarial relationship with her or anyone in the school and reminded her that we are all gathered for the same reason. Then she said something that pissed me off. She made me whip out the letter and the articles, and I did end up distributing the precollated packets.

Walking down the empty Middle School hallway after the meeting Matt (who had been invited to this meeting by the idiot counselor) leaned over and whispered in my ear "That was great Mom! When she said she wasn't angry and you said 'Oh, yes you are and I have your angry letter right here to prove it' and then you held up the letter and gave it out!! Ha! You were great!" and I realized that I was great in that meeting. I have put her in her place before, but that was always over the phone. This time I told her a thing or two in front of her peers. I saw Matt's English teacher nodding in agreement with me too.

Comments

[danelle]

Oooh boy, that sounds like so many meetings I've had in the past. And just when i thought it was over, I marry someone with a child in elementary school. AUGH.

[Margaret]

WAY to go. I think it's always a good idea to in prepared and expecting the worst. It's often what you end up with! Then you are the one with power.