Principal Notices Her Son Keeps Disappearing after School, Finds Baby Diapers in His Backpack – Story of the Day

A school principal is worried when her son starts disappearing after school, especially after she finds diapers in his school bag and she decided to follow him.

Lucy Trent spent a lot of time immersed in trouble. It was part of her job. She was a high school principal. But facing the problems that assailed families with teens day in and day out made her more than a little paranoid.

It turned Lucy into a hypervigilant, helicopter mom to her own fifteen-year-old son, Tim. So for Lucy, every mood was a marker that might indicate substance abuse or gang involvement. Thank goodness, teen pregnancy was off her worry list! Or was it...

Lucy kept a sharp eye on her son, and started noticing that he came home late every day after school, telling his mom he was at a friend's house, and during the weekends he just vanished.

Where was he going? What was he doing? Lucy became even more worried when her son's teachers reported a sudden drop-off in his grades, something she had warned other parents was a danger sign.

Children learn kindness from their parents.

Sad to say, Lucy started searching her son's backpack. If she'd been confronted with it she would have been ashamed of violating his privacy, but since no one knew, she did it. One day she found more than she bargained for.

She opened the backpack and found a bulky black plastic bag right on top. Lucy took it out of the backpack with trembling fingers. She carefully opened it but her experience as a principal hadn't prepared her for what she found. DIAPERS!

Diapers? Diapers meant a baby! A baby meant...HER SON WAS A FATHER AT 15! Was that where he went every afternoon and on the weekends? To be with his child and its mother?

But where did he go? And how could she confirm her supposition? Lucy decided that the very next day she was going to follow her son and discover the whole truth.

And that is exactly what she did. Lucy waited until school let out, then she followed Tim. He walked quite a ways until he came to an old abandoned house. Lucy watched her son walk in, then quietly followed him.

To her surprise, her son was sitting on the floor playing with twin babies about two years old. They couldn't possibly be his! Then she heard a man's voice. "Thank you so much, Tim. You don't know what this means to me, but I don't want you getting into trouble..."

"Too late for that!" cried Lucy, and stepped into the room. "What is going on here?" The man who was standing there talking to Tim was Peter Sutton, who until just a few weeks ago had been the school janitor.

"Mom!" cried Tim. "I'm...I'm just helping Peter! I look after the babies in the afternoons so he can go look for work..."

"What about the weekends?" demanded Lucy.

Peter stepped forward and said: "I have a part-time job at an old age home on the weekends. These babies are my grandchildren. My daughter left them with me three months ago, and she never came back.

"That was why I started coming in so late for work, and why I left early all the time...I couldn't leave them alone."

"But Peter," Lucy cried. "I fired you over being late and leaving early! Why didn't you tell me? I would have understood!"

Peter shrugged his shoulders and there were tears in his eyes. "I was ashamed," he whispered. "I think I must have been a bad father fro my daughter to have turned out like that. You're very lucky. Your Tim is a good, kind boy."

Lucy put her arm around Tim and gave him a big hug. "Yes he is, and I must learn to trust him more," she said, then added. "As for you, Peter, you're coming back to work. We will all help with the babies.

"Me, Tim, and I'll get the other teachers to lend a hand too. You're not alone, we will help you in whatever you need." Lucy kept her word to Peter, and she apologized to Tim for her suspicions and promised to ask him when she had any doubts.

What can we learn from this story?

• Help the aged, they are frail and sometimes carry heavy burdens. Lucy fired Peter for tardiness, never imagining that he was raising two babies on his own.
• Children learn kindness from their parents. Tim was kind and supportive towards Peter, just as he'd seen his mother do all his life.

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If you enjoyed this story, you might like this one about a wealthy banker who is horrified to discover that his young son has been mocking the son of his janitor for being poor.

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