Beating up the Boys

Well yesterday was the first FULL day of Kindergarten. All the parents got an e-mail from the teacher saying all the kids had done well. When I picked up Little Miss in the afternoon she explained a behavior management system in the class in which the goal is to have their names be on ‘green’ which means they are behaving and doing things as they are expected to do. Yellow, means that there has been an incident of some kind that requires discipline. When their name is on yellow the child must sit on the carpet during free play. Finally there is red, and if the child’s name gets to red, then they are sent to the principal’s office. Oh boy. So my dear daughter tells me that her name was moved to yellow today. Well at first she tells me she can’t remember why her name was moved to yellow. I let it go for the moment and continued to ask her about her day and learned that during quiet time a boy in her class was moving a chair that was next to her and she didn’t want him to move it. She then remembered this is what led to her name being moved to yellow. I asked her what she did when she got upset and she flatly tells me, “I hit him in the head with the chair.” Remember that pride I felt at her knowing what the Golden Rule was? Yeah, that was a nice moment. I talked to her about how she can’t hit people EVER and she tried to convince me that it was an ‘accident’. Although I had visions that she picked up the chair and broke it over this boy’s head, I later learned that the boy was laying on the floor and was moving the chair over his head as if to sort of sleep under it. Since this was annoying to Little Miss she pulled the chair back to where she wanted it and in doing so knocked him in the head. Still not okay, but much different than my vision of something akin to Dog the Bounty Hunter in a bar fight. She told me she had to sit on the carpet with two other boys during free time (is it bad that I was glad she wasn’t the only one who had her name moved to yellow?) But, because she sat so quietly the teacher allowed her to play for the second half of free time. Little Miss felt compelled to remind me that I still love her even if her name gets moved to yellow or red and then tried to push it further by telling me that I’m proud of her even if her name gets moved yellow or red. While I assured her that I love her no matter what, I did have to clarify what being proud of her means and that I am most proud of her when she behaves the way she knows she is supposed to behave. Then she told me, “Mommy, if my name gets moved to yellow 10 times, then I think I should lose TV for 6 days.” I decided if she was willing to come up with her own consequences, I was going to take her up on them and we made a deal right there. While I admit that 10 times feels like an awful lot, I decided to go with her plan and see what happens. This will either be a really good deterrent or by next week the TV will be dark. Let’s hope for the former!