I spent a couple days deciding whether or not I wanted to write this blog entry. I know that there's nothing perfect about parenting. I know you, dear readers, know that too. But I'm still loathe to admit my own shortcomings in such a barefaced and public way. (Surely that's a condition of all humanity, right?) On the other hand, if the point of this blog is to share my experiences with even one other person who might empathize or just not feel alone, then I need to be honest (mostly).
So here goes... my child, in his first few weeks of kindergarten, is apparently already a discipline problem. His school (and others, I'm learning from friends) has a color chart indicating each child's behavior for the day. It's not unlike the terror alert system, actually -- and let's face it, 5 year olds can be a terror. From best to worst, the colors go green - blue - yellow - red.
What color day each child has had is sent home daily in his or her homework folder. Most days of the week, my son is on green or blue. But a couple prominent times, he's been on red.
Never on yellow, mind you. Always totally good or totally bad. He's either an angel or an absolute demon all day long. All or nothing, baby, all or nothing.
On the days he's on red, his teacher will write me a little note about what the problem. "He had trouble listening today and used mean words and voice to talk to two of his friends." "He had a hard time following instructions today and had to be told repeatedly to complete tasks." Heartwarming things like that.
And then the piece de resistance came when I got an email from his teacher the other day asking for us to meet next week to come up with a plan to address his "behavior/attitude in class." Oh, things just keep getting better and better in my little world.
I acknowledge that my son sometimes has to be told two or three times to do something. It's a common problem I wrestle with at home. But I didn't think he was extraordinarily stubborn or defiant. It's normally that he's not paying attention or is easily distracted by a toy on his way to do whatever it was I asked him to do. I recognize also that listening the first time and following through are important skills for him to master now that he's in school.
But here's the thing -- I have no idea what kind of "plan" to come up with. We talk about his listening the first time. It does no good. I fuss at him for not listening the first time. It does no good. I take away privileges or toys for not listening the first time. It does no good.
This is decidedly a failing on my part, but that doesn't alleviate the fact that I still don't know what to do. And now I'm not only frustrated but also mortally embarrassed because it's grown from a frustration inside the four walls of my house to a public exposure of my wickedly poor parenting.
OK, I'm exaggerating for effect, but I am still embarrassed at having to be called in to talk to the teacher in the first few weeks of school. And unless she has some brilliant insight or bag of tricks that I've heretofore been ignorant of (and maybe she really does -- that's the hope), I'm not sure this meeting is going to have much purpose other than making me feel like more of a failure as a parent than I already do. Ugh, this is all just so awesome.
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