One Night at the Student-Teacher Conference

(Edited)

“Your daughter has a very vivid imagination about a pet dragon. But how she’s using her imagination to cope is what I wanted to talk with you about.”

That’s the first thing her teacher said at the parent-teacher conference. Not “So good to see you, Mr. Dumbrovski.” or even “Thank you for coming.” No, right to Claudia’s stories about her pet dragon.

I’d come hoping to talk about Claudia’s struggles with pre-algebra. I hadn’t had much luck helping her. Math has never been my strong suit and I had learned what at the time they called New Math but the book that Claudia brought home made almost no sense to me. Was there a New New Math that I hadn’t heard about?

But instead, Miss Wilson went right into showing me Claudia’s notebooks and quiz sheets. All of them covered with drawings of a dragon.

“Yes, I know that she says she has a pet dragon. Yes, I know she calls him Bob. Yes, yes, Bob’s a ridiculous named for a dragon. Sweet Jesus, did you think I haven’t already heard this a thousand times?

Yeah, I kind of lost it. Wasn’t fair of me. Miss Wilson had no idea what I’ve been through.

My wife ran off with a freaking blogger four years ago right about the time that the Bob stories started and left me to raise Claudia on my own. I’d hardly paid much attention to Claudia’s dragon stories at first. She was only six then and I didn’t think it was any different than a little girl pretending to be a princess. But she kept talking about her pet dragon.

I assumed it was just a phase. I’d played along, asked what color the dragon was (“Green of course daddy. He’s right here, can’t you see him?”) or why she called him Bob (“Because that’s his name.”)

It took a while until I realized that she was “feeding” her supposed pet dragon. I still haven’t figured out how she learned sleight of hand at such a young age. She’d take food off her plate, put her hand under the table, and bring it up empty. “Claudia, stop throwing your food on the rug!” followed by “But daddy, I was just feeding Bob.” and I could never find food on the rug. Sure, I’d seen people do tricks like that with coins and cards, but I couldn’t figure out how she did it with the food.

Two years later Claudia told me that food from her plate wasn’t enough for her growing dragon so Bob had said that he was going to go hunting. The coincidence that the picked-over bones of squirrels and rabbits started showing up all over the neighborhood soon thereafter hadn’t registered on my radar at the time. And last year when the neighborhood’s cats and dogs started disappearing people knew that coyotes were to blame, or maybe a mountain lion had come down from the hills.

“Mr. Dumbrovski, I understand that you’re as unnerved as the rest of us. Three children gone missing in the last month has the entire community scared out of their wits. We’ve had therapists and counselors working with all of our students, but Claudia’s way of dealing with her grief is, well, you’ve got to admit it’s a bit unusual. All of these drawings of a dragon flying off with a child in its talons? And in each drawing, the child looks like one of the three who’ve gone missing.”

“I’m sorry Miss Wilson. I had no right to raise my voice like that. What can I do?”

“I think Claudia may need some extra help processing all this, beyond what the counselors here can do. Maybe check with your insurance provider, see if there’s a good child psychologist in-network that can see her.”

“Of course. I’ll call tomorrow. Well, your next appointment looks like they want to get in here. Thank you for your time.”

“So good of you to have come. I’m sure Claudia will get through this. Good luck with your call tomorrow.”

Pixabay image



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7 comments

This was so intriguing!

But, first and foremost, you should probably help Claudia and Bob find food that isn't small children... I assume you'll find many other problems otherwise....

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Guessing Claudia doesn't get bullied more than once :)

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