ohbutno again

Well, we have prayed for Evan to be held accountable for his actions without much success until today. Last year he had a blow out after being given a detention that caused school administration to be hesitant to give him consequences according to his behavior. Which left him a bit too free to be himself. Until our middle school had a near total changing of the administrative guard this year.
This morning I sat in a meeting with Evan's special ed advocate preparing for our annual meeting with assorted school personnel to set the plan for the following year of Life with the Boy. As we talked about Evan's tendency toward avoidance and escape mechanisms, the door opened to reveal people there to inform us that my child's current location was unknown. He was not in class. He was in the library without a pass at one point, but he had since moved on to some new destination. They were looking for him. I called Don so he could join in the excitement.
When the boy was found we hear that he was avoiding Mrs. B's class because he decided to leave it early the day before, and he figured she would be mad. *sigh* So Advocate and I hang out while the principal gives the boy a two hour detention for Thursday. Then we walk the Boy back to Mrs. B's class.
Thirty minutes later the committee meets to discuss Evan. This group includes Mrs. B as the representative from the general education classroom teachers, the same principal who just gave the boy detention, a new special ed lead teacher, and three of us who have been working with Evan for years. Joy has been Evan's counselor since mid-elementary, and Patty's had Evan in her excellent care as a student for two and a half years. I have only been his mother for thirteen years, but I still have a voice. And it is both a resigned voice and a resolute one. I know my child, and I love him with all his idiosyncracies.
The meeting shuffles along for an hour and a half. We get everything settled nicely for Evan to handle daily life at school, testing, and answer behavioral questions like how to address episodes such as the one faced earlier in the morning. After the meeting, I stayed to talk with Patty and Joy. As I start to leave the building, the school receptionist asked that I remain to talk to the principal for a third time today. Because my son had been in a physical altercation with another student.
Joy came out to request that Evan be pulled out of class to meet with her. Instead she cooled her heels with me in the principal's waiting room. We talked with the principal, and were told that Evan bumped into a bully by accident. A kid who by all accounts is a hot head, and someone who pursues trouble. On a day when Evan had "trouble" written all over him already, and Evan is not one to submit to a bully anyway. So there were words exchanged. And someone was put in a headlock. And there was kicking. And my son has been suspended for the next three days.
I am holding onto the simple reality that he is being held accountable for his actions. And he is going to be spending these days doing chores and schoolwork. There is no t.v. or goofing off because he responded to provocation inappropriately. In a bit of irony, he was going to miss out on a writing assignment that required a partner for the topic of walking in someone else's shoes. Until I volunteered. That should be interesting.