Tell me if I’m wrong – I got out of my car in a school parking lot and screamed at another parent’s kid until he cried. And I’d do it again.
I’m a 38-year-old ER nurse who works nights, which means I’m the one doing school pickup for my son Brennan (8) every afternoon on about four hours of sleep. Brennan has a stutter. Not a small one. The kind where his whole face tightens up and he can’t get a word out for ten seconds, sometimes longer. He’s been in speech therapy since he was five. He tries SO hard.
Three weeks ago Brennan stopped wanting to go to school.
He wouldn’t tell me why. Just cried in the mornings, said his stomach hurt, begged me to let him stay home. I emailed his teacher, Mrs. Fitch, who said she “hadn’t noticed anything unusual.” I believed her. I shouldn’t have.
Last Tuesday I got to pickup fifteen minutes early. Parked in the back row of the lot near the bike racks where the kids come out from the side door. I was half asleep in my seat with the window cracked when I heard it.
A group of four boys, maybe fifth graders, standing in a circle around Brennan. The tallest one – later I found out his name is Colton Draper – was doing an impression. Mouth open, face scrunched, fake stuttering, going “B-B-B-B-Brennan can’t t-t-t-t-talk” while the other three laughed. Brennan was pressed against the brick wall with his backpack clutched to his chest.
My son wasn’t crying. That’s what broke me. He wasn’t even reacting. Like he’d learned to just stand there and take it.
I was out of the car before I knew I was moving.
I got right up to that group and I didn’t keep my voice down. I told Colton Draper that what he was doing was cruel and that he should be ASHAMED. I told him I was going to talk to his parents and the principal and that if I EVER saw him near my son again there would be consequences. I was loud. I was shaking. Colton started crying. The other boys scattered.
A mom I didn’t recognize came running across the lot yelling at me to get away from her son. Colton’s mother, Tanya. She got in my face and said, “Who the HELL do you think you are, screaming at a ten-year-old? You’re a grown woman. You should be arrested.”
I told her what her son was doing. She said, “Kids are kids, and YOU are an adult who just terrorized a child in a parking lot.”
The school called me the next morning. The principal said I “escalated the situation inappropriately” and that I’m no longer allowed on school grounds during pickup. Tanya Draper posted about me in the school parent Facebook group without using my name but describing exactly what happened. Half the comments say I’m unhinged. The other half say someone needed to stand up for my kid.
My friends and family are split. My sister said I was right to protect Brennan but wrong in how I did it. My coworker Denise said Tanya could press charges for threatening her kid. My ex-husband – Brennan’s dad – texted me that I “made everything worse” and now Brennan will be even more of a target.
That one hit different. Because yesterday Brennan came home with something stuffed in the bottom of his backpack that he didn’t want me to see. I found it after he went to bed.
I unfolded it. And when I read what was written on it, I picked up the phone and called the school superintendent directly. Because what those boys wrote about my son –
What Was on That Paper
It was a notebook page. Torn out, folded into quarters, shoved under his library book and his lunch bag like he’d been trying to bury it.
They’d drawn a picture of a boy with a huge open mouth. Tongue out. Xs for eyes. And underneath it, in three different handwriting styles because apparently this was a group project, it said: stutter boy is rtarded and should go to a different school for broken kids.*
Three handwriting styles.
This wasn’t Colton Draper acting out on a bad afternoon. This was organized. This was deliberate. This had been going on long enough for multiple kids to collaborate on it and hand it to my eight-year-old son like it was nothing.
I sat on the edge of Brennan’s bed for a while. Listened to him breathe. He sleeps with one arm over his face, always has, since he was a baby. I don’t know why I noticed that right then. I just did.
Then I went to the kitchen, poured out the coffee I’d made, and stood at the counter until I trusted my hands enough to dial.
The Superintendent’s Voicemail and What Happened After
It was 10:48 p.m. I left a message. I was calm. ER nurses learn to be calm when it counts; we save the shaking for after. I stated my name, Brennan’s name, his grade, his teacher. I described the note. I said I was documenting everything and that I expected a call back before 9 a.m.
He called at 8:17.
His name is Dr. Gerald Hoffsteader, and he has the voice of a man who has spent thirty years managing situations like this, which is to say he sounds extremely reasonable while saying very little. He expressed concern. He said the note was “absolutely unacceptable.” He said he would be speaking with the principal, with the teachers, with the families involved.
I asked him what, specifically, would happen.
He said he couldn’t discuss disciplinary actions involving other students.
I said, “I’m not asking what you’re doing to them. I’m asking what you’re doing to protect my son.”
Pause.
He said they’d be “monitoring the situation closely.”
I told him monitoring wasn’t enough. I told him Brennan had stopped wanting to go to school three weeks ago and Mrs. Fitch “hadn’t noticed anything unusual.” I told him I had the note in a plastic bag and I’d already photographed it and sent the photos to my own email with a timestamp. I told him the word on that note qualified as a slur targeting a child with a disability, and that I’d spent the previous hour reading our state’s anti-bullying statute, which requires schools to investigate within a specific timeframe and document findings in writing.
Another pause. Longer.
“Mrs. -“
“Ms. It’s Ms. Calloway.”
“Ms. Calloway. I want to assure you we take this very seriously.”
“Good,” I said. “Then I’d like that in writing.”
What My Ex Said When I Told Him
Kevin and I have been divorced for four years. It’s not a war, we’re not those people, but we’re not friends either. We do Brennan. That’s what we do together.
I texted him a photo of the note at 11 p.m. the night I found it.
He called me at 7 the next morning, while I was still waiting for Hoffsteader to call back.
“Jesus,” he said. That was the first thing. Just: Jesus.
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t Brennan tell us?”
And I didn’t have an answer for that, which is its own kind of gut-punch. My son is eight years old and he has already learned that some things are easier to hide than explain. He’s eight. He stuffed that note under his lunch bag and carried it home and said nothing.
Kevin was quiet for a second. Then: “What do you need?”
That surprised me. I told him about the superintendent call, the documentation, the statute. He said he wanted to be on the next call with the school. I said okay.
He didn’t bring up the parking lot thing. I didn’t bring up his text about me making everything worse. We just didn’t go there.
That was probably the most functional we’ve been in two years.
Brennan
Here’s what I haven’t said yet.
Brennan knows I went after those kids. He was right there. He watched me get out of the car. He watched Colton cry. He watched Tanya Draper get in my face and watched me not back down.
That night, after the whole thing, he didn’t say much. He was quiet in the car. We went through a drive-through and got milkshakes because I didn’t have the energy to cook and honestly I wanted to do something nice and normal. We sat in the parking lot of the Dairy Queen and drank them and he asked me if I was going to get in trouble.
I said maybe.
He said, “Are you sorry you did it?”
I thought about it. Honestly thought about it, because he deserved that.
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry I had to. But I’m not sorry I did.”
He went back to his milkshake. Chocolate. He always gets chocolate. After a minute he said, “Colton does it every day. Not just me. He does it to Marcus too, because Marcus wears the same shoes a lot.”
So there’s another kid. Marcus. Whose parents may or may not know. Who may or may not have a note folded up in the bottom of his backpack right now.
I wrote that down when I got home.
The Facebook Group, the Hallway Moms, and Tanya Draper’s Lawyer
Tanya Draper has not pressed charges. Denise was wrong about that, or Tanya thought better of it, or her husband talked her down. I don’t know. What I do know is that her post in the parent group got 47 comments before someone added me as a member and I was able to read the whole thing.
She described me as “aggressive and unstable.” She said I “physically approached” her son, which, yes, I did walk toward a group of kids, but I didn’t touch anyone. She said I screamed obscenities, which is not true. I didn’t swear once. I was loud. There’s a difference.
The comment section was something.
A woman named Barb said I should be reported to my employer for “violent behavior.” A guy named Todd said he would’ve done the same thing and anyone judging me had never had a kid get bullied. A woman who didn’t use her real name said her daughter was in the same class as Brennan and “this has been going on since September.”
Since September.
It was March when I found out.
Six months. My kid spent six months learning to stand against a wall and wait for it to be over, and not one adult at that school caught it, and Mrs. Fitch “hadn’t noticed anything unusual,” and I was home sleeping between night shifts not knowing.
I closed the app. Didn’t comment. My lawyer cousin, Paula, had told me to stay off the Facebook thread entirely, and for once in my life I listened.
Where It Stands Now
The school held a meeting. Me, Kevin, Dr. Hoffsteader, the principal, and Mrs. Fitch, who could not make eye contact with me for the entire forty-five minutes.
Colton Draper and two of the other boys received “formal disciplinary documentation,” which Hoffsteader explained in careful language means it goes in their file. Colton is apparently now required to meet with the school counselor weekly. There will be a classroom lesson on disability inclusion for the whole fifth grade.
I asked what was happening specifically in Brennan’s class, his actual classroom, with his actual teacher.
Hoffsteader looked at Mrs. Fitch.
Mrs. Fitch said she’d be “keeping a closer eye.”
Kevin put his hand flat on the table. He didn’t say anything. He just put his hand flat on the table and looked at her. I don’t know what that communicated, but she started talking about a buddy system and checking in with Brennan privately each morning.
We’re not done. I’m researching whether to request a formal 504 plan for Brennan that would document the bullying incidents as part of his educational record. Paula says it’s worth doing. Kevin agrees.
And I’m still banned from school pickup. Kevin does it now on the days he can. On the days he can’t, Brennan’s after-school teacher walks him to a car two blocks from campus where I wait.
My eight-year-old son walks two blocks to meet me because I made a ten-year-old cry for mocking him.
I’d do it again.
But I also think about Marcus. The kid with the same shoes. I wrote his name down and I asked Brennan if he knew Marcus’s last name.
He said he thought it was Webb.
I found a Marcus Webb in the school directory. His mom’s name is Carla. I haven’t called her yet. I’ve been trying to figure out how you start that conversation.
I think I just start it.
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If you’re still looking for more stories about parents who’ve reached their breaking point, check out My Pension, My Badge, My Career – I’d Do It Again, or read about what happened when I Stood in That Hospital Waiting Room and Said His Name Out Loud. You might also appreciate learning why My Boyfriend Walked Into That PTA Meeting and I Let It Happen.
