When I decided to become a stay at home dad, I expected it to be difficult for me to adjust to a new routine. My wife Carmen had just started a new career as a nurse that summer, and it had become evident pretty quickly that she wouldn’t have time to be primary caregiver anymore. In the end, it made more financial sense for me to stay home with our boy than it did for me to continue swinging a hammer on the jobsite. My son Paul was six at the time and was starting first grade. I expected him to be a little nervous, and I had some concerns about my ability to be nurturing. I’ve always been a little rough around the edges, and even my mother was skeptical at the idea of me transitioning from construction worker to Mr. Mom. Fortunately, to everyone’s surprise, I took to the job quite well, and in the process of learning to “keep house” I’ve actually learned a lot about life and myself.

Lesson One: Sticking up for your kid is hard.

Like many new stay at home dads, my first act as parent-in-charge was getting into a heated argument with the principal of his exclusive charter school. Naturally, I immediately followed this bold start by removing our son from said school and enrolling him into the only school that my loving wife had explicitly forbidden him to attend. Haha, no seriously, that really happened.

To explain, I’ll start by describing the school and its philosophy. I don’t want to name any names, so I’ll just call the place The Academy. The Academy is a well known charter school in my area. They have a mission statement of providing education that not only covers the basic academic skills, but also life skills that help a child grow into a well rounded citizen. Sounds awesome huh? Well, in practice, things were sometimes a little bumpy during Paul’s kindergarten year.

First there was the incident where he burst into tears in the lunch room because his Momma put a chocolate chip cookie in his lunch. He was afraid he was going to get in trouble because “cookies are a bad food.” Then there was the time that he was nearly expelled for pointing his finger at another kid and saying “bang bang, I got you!” He also got in pretty hot water for talking with his friends about Minecraft because it was “a terribly violent video game.” In spite of all that, he was receiving excellent instruction in academics, and his particular kindergarten teacher was such a nice person, we decided the positives outweighed the negatives.

As the next school year came around, I was confident that his experience at The Academy would be better. He already knew most of the kids and staff, and I had volunteered enough the previous year to become well known. I just didn’t expect a lot of surprises. That’s why I was taken somewhat unprepared for the implementation of a new dress code. Still, I understand the need for rules, so I tried hard to adhere to the very vague guidelines (nothing violent) that had been set forth. Alas, within the first week, I was informed that one of his shirts was too “violent” for him to wear. Though I couldn’t help imagining his Tony Hawk tee rampaging through the school and beating up small children, I complied.

Things were going well until Tuesday of the second week. His Momma took him to school that morning, and happened to pick out his clothes. With one look at the shirt she had picked out, a tee with a picture of Wolverine from the neck up, Paul says, “I can’t wear that. It’s too violent.” My darling wife, being a reasonable person, couldn’t see anything violent about it, and told him to put it on anyway. Well, that turned out to be a mistake. Paul did as his Momma said, and put on the shirt. He didn’t say anything more about it, though later he admitted to me that he knew his principal would not like the shirt.

That afternoon, when I picked him up, he was clearly upset. As we drove home, he slowly told me the story of what happened. Here’s how it went. He walks into school and follows the normal morning routine of stowing his things and taking a seat with his class. Once they line up to enter the classroom, his teacher tells him to step out of line and come with her. She then takes him directly to the principal and indicates his shirt. The principal then leans over him and says, “Paul, didn’t we tell you not to wear violent shirts?” Paul says, “Yes” and begins to cry. She then continues by saying, “We DO NOT allow violence at this school Paul. You WILL NOT wear anything like that again. DO YOU HEAR ME?!” Paul, crying too hard to speak, nods vigorously. With tears streaming down his face, he’s lead back to the classroom, and told to go to his seat.

Anyone that has ever tried getting a semi-accurate story out of a six year old understands what a slow process it can be. With GREAT patience, I managed to get the tale out of him over the course of four or five hours. By the time I had a reasonable idea of what had occurred, everyone from the school had already gone home. There wasn’t anything I could do at the time, so I resolved to deal with it first thing the next morning. Needless to say, I was pretty hacked off.

Of course, when Carmen got home, we had to rehash the entire thing. I have to admit, I was a little irritated with her. I had explicitly told her about the shirt Nazis at his school, and I was annoyed that she had picked out that shirt for him. I knew it wasn’t in any way violent, but I also knew that his principal was on a tear about the whole “violence in schools” thing, and that she was looking to make an example. I was also irritated by what I perceived as her “fact checking” behind me when she put Paul through another thorough questioning regarding that day’s events. Of course I know it’s a natural reaction for her to want to talk to Paul about it, but at the time, I was angry and a little irrational. Fortunately, I was able to keep my big mouth shut about those feelings, and discuss the issue at hand.

As I have mentioned before, I am somewhat rough around the edges. I have a visible temper, and diplomatic finesse is not my strong suit. Where I grew up, physical violence was often the first indication of someone else’s displeasure, so talking politely to someone I want to strangle is tough for me at the best of times. Carmen knows this about me, so she asked me if I wanted her to deal with Paul’s principal in the morning. In the past, I would have agreed, but I felt it was my job as the stay at home parent to deal with this sort of thing. I needed to prove to myself, and to her, that I could do this without losing my cool.

When the next morning dawned, Paul and I dressed in the most innocuous clothing we could find and proceeded to The Academy. I dropped him off like normal, and then I waited for the kids to get sorted out before approaching his principal. I didn’t wait to start things out on the wrong note, so I asked her politely if she had time to speak; she did. We went into her office, and closed the door. I took a seat and tried my very best to look nonthreatening. With as positive an attitude as I could muster, I began the conversation. As far as I can remember, it went something like this:

Me: (smiling) “Good morning. I wanted to speak to you about the situation yesterday with Paul’s shirt. I wan…”

Principal: (not smiling and talking over me) “Yes, as you know, we don’t allow violent shirts here at The Academy. Paul’s shirt had a picture of Wolverine on it. Wolverine has claws that come out of his hands, and he uses them to hurt people. This is completely unacceptable, and I’m tired of having to repeat myself on this point.”

Me: (still smiling) “I understand you don’t want violent images, but you can’t even see his hands in the picture. It’s a head shot from the neck up. He’s not even in costume. I don…”

Principal: (talking over me again) “You know very well what kinds of things Wolverine does Thom. We’ve had this discussion before, and I’m not going to tolerate it!”

Me: (not smiling anymore and getting somewhat exasperated) “Look, I get it OK? But the rules for the dress code are so ambiguous it’s hard to follow them. Why not just come up with some sort of uniform to eliminate all the confusion? I know that we aren’t the only people you’ve talked to about this, so it’s obvious that there needs to be a more clearly defined set of rules.”

Principal: (she actually let me finish that time) “I think it’s terrible that you would suggest I stop these kids from wearing beautiful pictures like rainbows and butterflies that are totally acceptable. It’s not fair to take that away from those parents just because you and a few others (parents of boys) are unable to follow the rules.”

Me: (definitely exasperated now) “RAINBOWS?! Are you serious? I have a son, not a daughter. He likes boy things like Wolverine. Why does he like Wolverine? Because he’s a SUPER HERO, he fights BAD GUYS, he fights for JUSTICE, and he’s NOT REAL! It’s not violent. It’s just boys being boys, and you’re being ridiculous and unreasonable. You’re clearly upset, and have been defensive since we stepped in your office. What the hell?”

Principal: (looking like she might leap across her desk at me) “I AM DEFENSIVE! I’m tired of having to explain myself on this point! This is MY school, and I WILL NOT have it corrupted by violence. I refuse to accept that he’s a super hero. He kills people with his claws, and I WILL NOT ALLOW IT HERE!!!” (She was literally screaming at this point.)

Me: (envisioning strangling her as I get up and open the door to her office) “Ya know what?! You’re completely unreasonable, and I am THROUGH DEALING WITH YOU!!!!” (I managed not to slam the door, though I wanted to do it sooooooo bad.)

Well, that didn’t go quite as planned. As I walked out, I passed the astonished stares of the faculty that had overheard our row. I guess no one had ever stood up to her before, because they were looking at me like I had just come out of Smaug’s lair carrying his head. That was strange to me, because all I felt was a sense of immense failure. I knew that this confrontation had just ended Paul’s stint at The Academy. Even if the principal from Hell didn’t choose to pursue things, there was no way I could continue to give her authority over my son. She had demonstrated bad judgment when she singled out my son and made him cry over something so trivial, but she had demonstrated mental instability when talking with me. It was at that point I accepted that, for better or worse, Paul would be going to a different school.

My biggest concern was Carmen. She had worked so hard to get Paul into The Academy. She put hours into researching the best schools in the area before Paul was even done with VPK, and had picked The Academy from near the top of her list because it was so close to our home. I half expected her to jump down my throat for screwing up the meeting with the principal. Even worse, I was worried that she would try to make me apologize, and I had zero intention of doing that.

It was then, while I was mentally preparing myself for a serious fight with the love of my life, when I realized for the first time that sticking up for your kid is hard. Sometimes it puts you in impossible situations where you end up looking like an unreasonable ass no matter how hard you try. I knew I couldn’t have acted any differently. It’s my duty as Paul’s father to defend him and his right to express himself. I couldn’t possibly have ignored how upset he was, and I couldn’t do anything about the extremely negative disposition of his principal. Yet here I was in this predicament. Well then, so be it. I set my jaw, and continued home to whatever was coming next.

To her everlasting credit, Carmen supported my decision. After I told her what had happened, I let her know that I wanted to remove him from The Academy and enroll him in our local public school. I could see in her eyes that she wanted to argue the point. I could tell she was thinking of all the reasons why she hadn’t picked that school to begin with. It’s a strange thing, but we know each other so well, we can almost read each other’s minds.

Though she clearly had doubts, I could see that she was deciding to swallow her fears and back me up regardless of the consequences. That simple act of unconditional support is something that I will always be grateful for. It was her passing the reigns of parental power to me even though I knew she didn’t want to. That kind of thing takes a lot of character. I’ve always known my wife is a stellar person, but she surpassed herself that day, and I’ll never forget it.

Paul never spent another day at The Academy. Carmen called them the following day, and unenrolled him. By the next Monday, Paul was going to our local public elementary school. Even though he was two weeks late starting, he got honor roll the entire year. He made a bunch of new friends that he enjoys discussing Minecraft with, and we don’t even mind that they have a school uniform.