I am used to getting a call from my children’s school, with the nurse on the other end of the line, telling me, “Everything’s OK Mom, but N’s
- Head hurts
- Has a stomach ache
- Fell backward off of the bleachers in Music class
Today when my phone rang and the caller ID identified the caller as the elementary school, I was ready to say hi to the nurse for the first time this year. It wasn’t the nurse. It was the Assistant Principal. Not for my older son, but my younger one. The kindergartner. How could this be????
It seems that G was not listening to directions, so the teacher was going to change his “color”. While she was going over to do so, he started crying and yelling and apparently lunged at her and grabbed her legs – in hoping that she would not get to the chart to actually physically change his color. He was crying so incessantly that she had to get the A.P. involved. That is when I received the call. My first reaction:
That is not my son. He would never do that. You are totally overreacting.
Then I remembered how this morning he didn’t want me to throw something of his away (because he was not listening previously), and he grabbed onto my ankles, hoping to literally stop me in my tracks.
The A.P. said that she had a long talk with G, and that he promised he wouldn’t do it again. I spoke to him on the phone at that point – he got on all stuffy from crying. I tried to explain to him that what he did was wrong and that we would talk about it further when I got home. OYE.
3:00 rolls around and I get a call from the teacher. She tells me the story of what happened this morning, along with Part II – apparently, at the end of the school day, when she was circling their color on their agenda and she wasn’t giving G the “blue” he thought he deserved, he freaked out again and grabbed on to her waist. In came the A.P. and also a behavioral therapist “Miss Amy”. Is this really happening? My sweet, gorgeous, intelligent, super awesome 5 year old???
I was told that Miss Amy is now going to be G’s advocate in a way. In the future, if he starts to get frustrated, he can ask his teacher to call Miss Amy or she will call her on her own. Miss Amy will come into the classroom to diffuse G, calm him down, and de-escalate his anger. This is my little guy we’re talking about.
My husband and I have our work cut out for ourselves. We really need to talk to him about communicating with words instead of crying and yelling. He needs to know that he cannot touch the teacher. I thought he knew all of this. I feel, in a way, that we did something wrong for him to be this way. G has a temper, and he’s not afraid to show it. Usually, his older brother gets the brunt of it, not that it is OK either way.
I have a lot of research to do. If anyone has any tips or suggestions for me, I welcome them with open arms.
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