I don't care much for Torry-Ann (pt 2)

I've worked out why, now. 

Early in my teaching career, a boy who I'll call Jamie (not his real name) joined my class. He was brought into the classroom on his first day of school by his Aunty Alice (also not her real name) who told me that Jamie, age 9, was one of a set of triplets. His parents had just decided that three children were harder work than they thought, and that they'd keep the girls, thank you very much, but they didn't really fancy being Jamie's parents any more. Alice, who wasn’t actually his Aunt, but knew the family, was looking after him instead.

It wasn't an official adoption or fostering arrangement, for reasons I can't quite remember and am not sure I ever really knew in the first place. Nevertheless, Jamie lived with Alice and she was the one who brought him to school, and picked him up, and packed his lunch, and took him to the doctor, and made him do his homework and took on all of the other duties and decisions that are part of parenthood. If there was an issue, or Jamie got into trouble, it was Alice who came in to see me.

Alice came in to see me a lot that year. Jamie, you see, had fairly severe attention deficit disorder, plus a very short temper, and a tendency to hit anyone who annoyed him. A killer combination. It meant that the other kids in the class learnt quite quickly (certainly a lot more quickly than they learnt most of the things I was trying to teach them) that they could get a reaction out of him. And, because that’s exactly the kind of thing that nine-year-olds, especially en masse, tend to find hilariously funny, Jamie had a tough time.

I am not saying that he was never at fault, or that he was easy to manage. He was, a lot of the time, a complete pain in the neck. But, after teaching hundreds of kids (and by teaching I mean sorting out arguments between, which is something you spend a lot more time doing than you might think as a primary school teacher) I don’t think I have seen one as genuinely sorry for his behaviour as Jamie was when he realised that he had done something wrong. Usually the penny dropped much too late, but once he had calmed down after whatever catastrophe had erupted, the realisation that he had done the wrong thing would smack him in the face, and he’d become distraught, often devastated by his own actions. He accepted punishments graciously, and did his best to make amends. Jamie was hard work, but he was a good kid.

He was particularly good, or at least he tried to be, if it was a Friday. On Fridays he would arrive at school almost bouncing out of his skin with excitement, and all day long he walked a bit taller, almost fell over himself to be helpful and polite, and practically turned purple from the extra effort he was making to concentrate on his work and stay out of trouble. The strain would be written all over his face. The reason for this was simple: Friday was the day that Alice took Jamie to go and stay with his parents and sisters for the weekend.

The weekend never went as planned, and inevitably the Jamie who arrived at school most Monday mornings was, at only nine years old, a broken man. He would arrive silently and trail slowly behind Alice, wearing his disappointment like a weighted vest. Alice would tell me that she’d taken Jamie to his mum and dad’s house, and that he’d managed to get into trouble or that he’d fought with his sisters too much, or something else had gone wrong, and that his parents had sent him back to her early. She’d leave, looking anxious, and we’d try and cope with the rest of the day.

Some Mondays, Jamie was just a bit sad and forlorn, other times he was a tense, simmering ball of anger and resentment. Either way, it was a rare Monday if he hadn’t managed to get into some kind of scrape or bust-up with someone before morning break. We’d deal with it, and he’d face the consequences and move on, and by the time the following Friday had arrived, he’d be bouncing with excitement and full of expectation all over again. As he left school you could practically see the big thought bubble appearing over his head: If I’m really good this time, they might let me stay.

We muddled through the rest of the school year like this, and he came back the following year to muddle through year 6, all the while still living with his Aunty Alice. Thanks to her, he coped. But it couldn’t have been easy, and it certainly wasn’t fair.

I thought about Jamie when I read the story of Torry-Ann Hansen, and the little Russian boy she decided she didn’t want any more. I can accept that it must have been a difficult decision to make, and that she may have had her reasons, and that there could me more to the story than we’ve been told. But I can’t accept that it is, in any sense, fair.