I finally got the letter saying I had to take Scotty to the German school doctor...
Let's just say the experience was less than pleasurable. It made me so incredibly angry and offended and helpless ...all at the time.
My letter said I should take Scotty to a "School Doctor" downtown at 8:15, on Monday morning. I'll save that long story by just saying.
- Monday morning traffic into second largest city in Germany.
- Two tired little kids.
- Finally take illegal parking spot at grocery store.
- Walk for four blocks in the dark... in the freezing rain.
If anyone is even thinking, "Gee, she should have taken the train... consider yourself punched and you are not my friend anymore. Click the x in the top right corner of your screen please. :) "
By some miracle we found where we needed to go and we waited our turn. The receptionist called us in and we met the "doctor". I'm not even sure if she was a doctor, but we'll just call her the Devil's Spawn for lack of a more fitting name.
The Devil's Spawn asked, in German, if we spoke German. I said "ein bisschen". First mistake. I should have just said, "No".
Truth: I don't speak any German. I can say some random words and I can put together very simple, yet still, very poorly constructed sentences. Having a 100 word vocabulary doesn't mean I speak a little German.
Anyways...
The Devil's Spawn tells Scotty to sit down and Andrea and I take a seat. She asks me, (in German) if Scotty understands German. I said he did not. She then SIGHED like a 14 year old, rolled her eyes, did the shoulder lift and drop... UGHH!!!
I get this move so many times from people here. It drives me nuts!!! I can't believe grown adults do this to other adults. It happens ALL THE TIME TO ME! So it's obviously she's annoyed with us in general...and I'm all of a sudden super excited to be there.
The Devil's Spawn asks Scotty to draw a picture of a house and a person. He spends some time picking the right color (red) and draws a picture, thankfully of a house and person, and NOT a dirty bubble. :) (I'll post a dirty bubble picture later)
His house has windows everywhere, a door, a chimney with smoke, a roof with shingles... it's awesome. I love it. What does The Devil's Spawn think? "Das ist sehr schlect." (This is very bad.)
She told me his person was incomplete. "Where are the fingers, toes, hair, ears... Weeeee all have these." Then she scribbles some blah-blah-German words on his file. My response: "Super picture Scotty, I love it."
The Devil's Spawn moves on. She has a picture, one that you tilt up and it shows a picture, tilt it down is shows another one... Scotty says he sees a flower and a car.
This one took me a while to figure out. I thought there was only two pictures... a car and a flower. He kept saying "Flower. Car. Car. Flower. Car. Car. Flower." Spawn Woman keeps saying "No, Nein, No". It wasn't until I saw the "answers" on the back of the card that I realized the card had three pictures and one was a STAR. Scotty doesn't say S's very well. His "Star" sounded like "car". She again rolls her eyes and starts telling me he can't speak. Should he be in school at all? Sehr Schlect...
Yah, well guess what? He's missing his speech class so he can sit here with you for this highly productive activity.
It went on with more things like this. She was mean and rude and the whole time Scotty thought he was doing everything wrong, and "losing" the games, despite my praise from the sidelines...
No, that's not a boat it's a ship. No, that's not a duck it's a goose.
She said he was color blind because he was saying puppy when she was pointing to the fish. Well, gee Spawn Woman, there is a puppy on the other of the paper, maybe he was too busy looking at the puppy made out of dots to see you were pointing your pointy little, crackly, cigarette stained, witch finger at the fish. He's FIVE.
She was even irritated he was shorter than her stand-on-to-measure-you scale. Another audible sigh...
Her pirate patch wouldn't stay on his head for the vision test... another audible sigh and rolling of the eyes, "Why is his head so small?"
It was terrible. Unreal. I can't believe this woman exists.
This is the best part:
Scotty was in the middle of naming pictures, incorrectly, when he looks at me and says, "When can we go back to America?" My poor little brown eyed boy... :( ...looking at me from across the long table with the Devil's Spawn yelling Nein in his sad little face... I wanted to scoop him up, punch the Devils' Spawn in the face, and take him home to feed him our last box of Fruity Pebbles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. :(
Instead I laughed out loud and did so pretty loud at that. Now the whole situation was just plain funny. I told The Boy I had some American licorice in my bag. He perked up a little...
We had now been there a while and now Andrea is starting to get bored. She gets up and roams around the room - silently. The Devil's Spawn tells me she can't walk around. Hmmm, okay. So I get her back on my lap and give her my phone. Spawn Woman yells... "NEIN!!!!" "NO PHONES". I just looked at her for a while ...a long while. After the last half hour of harassment and now this!
I'm done.
"It's not a phone, it's a toy. See? She's playing with it. Das ist ein spiel." Boy did I get a scowl then. I think that was exact moment we both realized we mutually hated each other.
So I figured what the heck... "So. Do you really think you should be working with children? Scotty is kinda stressed out after all this."
What? No sigh. No comment. Nothing... I'm tired of being nice and kissing her butt. I'm finally ready to tell her off and she doesn't have anything to say?!
"So are we done?" I felt a little bad at this point because I could sense I was giving her a pretty nasty glare on my face. We left. Who knows where her dumb report will go, but I'm all done with this. I did what Germany wanted and I'm all done.
It was weird though. I felt like I was trapped in this room and someone was harassing my child. I felt like I couldn't do anything. It felt like I was stuck there and had to do this. I was just helpless and waiting for it to be over so we could just be done and leave. It was like I was really being forced to do something I didn't want to do or else I'd get in trouble... I'm not sure why it felt like that it just did.
It was a strange and yucky feeling ... and that's why I'm done doing things for the schlect German School System.
5 comments:
I can't beleive this really happened!!! No, she should NOT work with children. I doubt she should work with people. Not even German ones!
I really really really wonder what was going on her mind...
AT least in Denmark and Sweden most people don't get stupid if you want to speak English to them.
Poor brave Scotty. Luckily he has a tiger mum, who knows he is very smart. I think of all other mums coming there with not so clever kids.... Please move over here instead! Hugs.
Wow. That sounds awful! I'm going to be snide and say that she's probably on a government worker's paycheck because they all have attitudes. But I don't want to get riled up :)
Hope the test satisfied the Germans and that your son didn't take it personally. And thank God it's not your actual physician who acts like that. I've never had someone that peeved that they had to speak English...most people over here are happy for the practice.
So maybe she was just having a bad day...or thinks her German sucks so you put her on the spot. Yeah, that's it ;)
What a horrible woman! Was it actually a secret test to see how long it took before a mother takes a swing at her head? I'd say she should stick to working with German shepherds, but that would constitute animal cruelty and I'm sure she'd get bit in NO TIME!
I had heard the German system was as bad if not worse than the Danish system in terms of the arrogance of the 'People In Charge'. Like homeschooling is ILLEGAL in Germany because Hitler said so and they never revoked the law? Ugh. But what Scottie went through today? I can tell you, my eldest went through very similar in DK when we first arrived, and my youngest had some equally abusive stuff happening when we used a normal doctor in Dk for his first checkups, all signs on our way to NOT kissing the mainstream system's ass here. I am so sorry you went through it and I hope you find a way not to have to deal with IDIOTS like that again. I could write some really bad cuss words right now.
I think Europe sucks, and it's not liberal at all, and it's too controlling, and we have to find out little ways around it.
I can also tell you that that the UK isn't the same. There is more choice. And no, the Uk isn't Europe, it's different, because we don't think of ourselves as living in Europe, we think of ourselves as living on an Island called England. With Scotland and Wales and Cornwall and Norfolk tagged on. And yeah, the Brits stole a bit of Ireland. That was bad, as was a lot of the colonization stuff. But it's still not Europe.
Please excuse this incomprehensible rant, but this post made me MAD. I want to go box that German doktors nose real bad. Tell her from me, she's no good. I don't like her at all. She sounds like an IDIOT.
Plus, a lot of doctors are awful, they get all powered up and think they can do what they want. The difference is, you should have the option to sack her if she doesn't serve you well. Can you do that? Thing is, she is supposed to be working for YOU, not the other way round. Her sucky sucky tests don't mean anything.
Sucky sucky Europe. Is my thought for today.
Z x
wow!! I can't believe you had to deal with that...I am very proud you didn't hit her, even though she defenetly deserved a smack across the face.. :)Poor lil scotty atleast he has a spaecial place in his heart for the good ole' USA :)
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