Er, my kid can do no wrong?

Add this to the list of parental shortcomings I told myself I'd never have but ended up having anyway. Yesterday, Ben came home from school and told me that the lunch supervisor had sent him to the back of the lunch line because she had told his class not to touch the wall, and then she caught him leaning against the wall. Sheesh, that seems a little harsh, was my first thought. What fourth-grader isn't a little spacey sometimes?

See, this is where the whole parent-I-thought-I'd-never-be part comes in. I've heard so many stories about those parents whose child misbehaves at school, and when the child is disciplined at school, the parents get upset and defend their child as if their darling offspring could do no wrong. I would never do that. Or would I?

Now, never mind that Ben didn't seem too upset about the situation. When he told me about what happened, it was more like this: I got sent to the end of the lunch line, and they ran out of French toast sticks, so I got pancakes instead. Yay! No matter. Suddenly, I was feeling what you might describe as defensive of my child.

This wasn't the first time I'd felt this way in recent weeks. A couple weeks ago, Ben forgot at school his agenda, which a parent needs to sign each day. He told me, again with no fretting on his behalf, that he would lose a ticket (part of his class's reward system) and have to stay in for a recess. I felt a ridiculous urge to save him from his penalty. Could I somehow get to school and get the agenda, I wondered. I felt like Gloria on last week's Modern Family, wanting to save Manny from the consequences of taking his classmate's locket.

Alas, unlike Gloria, I didn't act on any of my wacky ideas or urges. I didn't complain about the lunch supervisor or make a desperate dash to school to pick up Ben's agenda. Rationally, I know that logical consequences are good for kids. I know that kids, or people in general, for that matter, rarely recount happenings completely accurately. For all I know, Ben had been warned several times not to lean against the wall. Anyway, it doesn't matter much, does it? When my kids are at school, the discipline decisions by and large belong to the responsible adults there. So I guess I've had to arrive at a somewhat uneasy peace with that. But man, that lunch lady was a little harsh, no?