School Thoughts

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This school thing. Man. It can be stressful. I wonder if Playette's classmates parents think about the kinds of things I think about.

For example, and I know this is far from unique, in the class, if a child has a discipline issue, they must move a clothespin with their name on it from green to yellow (or yellow to red for a second infraction) on a laminated picture of a stoplight. After moving the clothespin, the child is required to color in a drawing of a streetlight with the appropriate colored crayon and then the teacher writes what the issue was on the lines below and sends it home for the parent to see and hopefully address with the child. It is to be signed and returned.

I explained all of that so that I could say this: Playette came home with her second yellow yesterday.

Do other parents immediately jump to the worst? Or do they take it in stride?

The first time, she told another girl that she didn't like her.

Gasp! Gasp!

Gasp #1: Really? She likes everybody. What's what about? Doesn't she know that speshul angels aren't allowed to be bullies?

Gasp #2: Hole up, hole up. The other kid understood her speech well enough to be brought to tears?! Still sucks, but...y'know...YAY SPEECH!

Yesterday, she was pushing. Not one person. Multiple people.

What the what?

Y'all know I struggle with putting too much pressure on this kid.

With expecting her to be the [booming voice]Posterchild for Successful Inclusive Practices[/booming voice].

I'm working on it. And also coming to terms with the fact that one day they're not just gonna up and kick her out of school. Yet.

The yellow lights are forcing me to acknowledge what I already know.

That my daughter is a five-year-old girl and she often acts developmentally appropriate, which means that she can work some nerves.

I have to be ok with that. It's a delicate balance. She still needs to be disciplined. But sometimes she really may not know the right thing to do. Those times break my heart. I can see in her eyes that she just. doesn't. get it.

So we'll work on it. Both of us.

What helps, though, are things like this...

I forgot to put a note in Playette's backpack today, explaining my plans to pick her up from school. So I sent the teacher an email. My first time doing so since the first week of school. She wrote me back, letting me know that she was on-board with the dismissal plan, and then I wrote her again and I asked a few questions. Hopefully, she's cool with my informal tone. At least my grammar was semi-decent.

How are things with [Playette] going? I noticed she was pushing yesterday. Ugh. 

We have officially entered [a chaotic time. again. some more.]. More undesirable behavior may result as she deals with that, but I hope not. I'm going to try to keep her occupied with fun-ish things. 

Also, she has started waking up VERY early. Does she seem tired in class at all? 

She really enjoys learning sight words and even asks to practice. I love that.

And I just saw her reply. Here's an excerpt:

She is doing great! Sometimes, the inability to make others understand what one wants may be replaced with undesirable behavior. It may happen to all of them by the time the school year is done. We have been talking about respect, behaviors, and rules. Teaching them to use their words instead of their bodies is all a part of it. 

It gets better. We drew a picture of our family today and wrote about what we do together as a family. [Playette's]  was good. She drew with some help, of course, a picture of her family... 

p.s. No she doesn't seem tired.

Love this. It helped me pack away Crazy Crittle for the night. If my children don't continue their mission to tag team and keep me up all night, I might actually sleep well with my warm, fuzzy from the email.Would printing it out and putting it under my pillow be weird? Yes? Ok, then I was kidding about that part. Um, LOL.

Before I forget, apparently, in that family picture? My child drew all of us crying.

Really? Drama Queen. BECAUSE THAT NEVER HAPPENED. Of course she couldn't just talk about how we went bowling on Saturday and she had a wonderful time. Noooo. Gotta make us look like wack-a-loons.

But I laughed.

Sometimes you just have to.

She's five.