Kindergarten Bad Boy Club

Oh but my boy had a bad day at school today. First he got on "red" (they have a level system of green, yellow and red, with green = good, red = bad, and yellow is somewhere in between) in class. Yesterday he got a yellow, but was able to bring it back up to a green. Shew. Today all the way red and not so much with the bringing it back up. Ugh. THEN, he - according to the piece of paper sent home - smeared mud on another kid (not that big of a deal), and punched, that's right PUNCHED another kid in. the. face. That, people, is a big problem. And, (sigh) the trouble didn't take long to pop up.

So, I ask him about it and the just moments before super happy kid, clams up and refuses to make eye contact. Quietness and lack of eye contact, in my kid, can only mean a handful of things. Either he's sick, or completely exhausted, or super guilty. I'm betting on both exhausted and guilty. What a fun combo.

So, the story goes like this. "Momma you forgot to remind me to follow all the rules and that's why I talked in the hall. 'Cause me and some others forgot we weren't supposed to do that." And then... "Alexis was tagging me and I didn't want to be tagged and I told her to stop and she didn't. So I told her to stop and she still didn't. So then I..." and we resume with the muteness and lack of eye contact. So that leads me to believe that he did hit the other kid. Although, I really don't believe that he punched her (yes, the other kid was a girl, though, really, that makes not one bit of difference to me). Regardless, kid's got some consequences coming.

I asked him how he was feeling and he (using an angry voice) asked me why I was making him feel so sad. It was a good learning opportunity. So we talked about how other people can't make us feel a particular way and it was probably his conscious making him feel so sad. Then he cried. And my heart broke a little.

In other news, the kid's medicine has been out the last couple of days and he's been waking up super early. Related to punching other people much?!??!!! I think so, too.

Today's lesson - it's so hard, as a parent, to separate yourself from your child. By taking responsibility for everything they do, we can set ourselves up in a bad way. It allows them to blame us for every choice they make. They need to take responsibility for their bad choices, in order to learn to make better choices. And they need to take responsibility for their good choices, because this gives them the confidence to know that they are indeed capable of independence.