throwback thursday: double trouble in first grade

I'd like to tell the story of the beginning of school LAST year.  Do you remember this?  Well, here's a little more detail about what happened after those photos were taken at the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year. The first day went great, all the boys reported happy news of nice teachers, fun things to do, and kids they knew in their class. Then a few days passed and I was sitting at home when the phone rang.  It was the principal of the elementary school. You know whenever the principal calls, you get that feeling that you must be about to get in trouble. Yeah, I always get that feeling, about other things too, not just the principal calling. I get it whenever the phone rings. By now I realize that I'm usually not in trouble when the phone rings, but this time was different.

Anyway, nice principal proceeded to tell me that she had Jack in her office.  She told me all the details of what had conspired that day.  It started in his classroom.  First thing you need to know about Jack is that he is a perfectionist and likes to be good and get rewarded/praised.  He is the kid who works really hard to never get his "card turned" or whatever the discipline may be. He prided himself on getting "green" marks each day, week, month and most of the year in kindergarten.

So, back to the first week of 1st grade. Apparently, he had a disagreement with a child who sat next to him and this boy told the teacher that Jack was talking/doing something naughty (I don't remember what he was doing and it's not really that important).  Anyway, the boy told the teacher and that's what set Jack off.  He doesn't like getting in trouble or having his "perfect" record tarnished so he became very angry at this boy and approached him to tell him he was "going to kill him." Uh oh. Yeah, you just can't say that in public school and certainly not the first week of school when the rules must be enforced strictly and the teachers don't know you.  So, this time the teacher talked to him and calmed him down (by now I believe he was crying and very upset).  She had him apologize, sit in time out and wait a while.  As he was sitting in time out, he became more upset, was still crying and began yelling and talking back to his teacher.  He was entering full on melt down mode.  He told her things like, "you can't tell me what to do," "why does everyone want to control me?," "whey doesn't everyone just let me do what I want to do?," "I hate school.  I hate you all."  Things like that.  Things that are just not like my Jack AT ALL.  His lovely teacher calmed him down a bit and had him go back to his seat.  At this point, still fuming silently, he went back to the same boy and again said, "I'm going to kill you."  Oh boy.  That's when the principal got involved. While in the principal's office, he went back into melt down mode, yelling and crying the same disrespectful stuff he said to his teacher, to the principal. He got a "special note" sent home and a call from the principal. All very rough stuff.

As I was listening to this all play out from the principal's perspective it was all I could do to not start bawling on the phone. I told her I'd look for the slip and talk to Jack when he got home. A lot of thoughts crossed my mind including, "Jack is really hurting, what did I do?  How can I help him? I'm worried about him." and "I'm so humiliated. This isn't like him at all. I'm confused," to "I'm a failure. What must they think of me and our family?" You know all the fun stuff.

When Jack got home, he seemed normal, but when I asked if he had anything to give me, he said no and tried to hide the paper. I took him in his room and we had a conversation. This conversation included both of us crying A LOT, me trying to be loving towards him and figure out what happened from his perspective, offering to help him, explaining to him that it's never okay to say you're going to kill someone, etc. From our conversation, I felt that several factors contributed to his melt-down including the abrupt switch from summer mode to school mode, the increased difficulty of 1st grade from kindergarten, his crazy desire to not get in trouble, and so on. It was a really bad situation and I felt terrible for him, for the little boy, his teacher and principal. Plus I felt like an absolute failure as a mom. We made a plan together listing some ideas he could try when he gets upset including counting to his favorite number, singing a song, using kind words, talking about his feelings, "That is making me mad!" etc. We read a book about a girl who got really upset and the things she did to help her. He wrote three different letters, one to the little boy, one to his teacher and one to the principal apologizing for what he did and said.

Another few days went by and I thought things were good. I was just hoping he wouldn't have another melt down. And he didn't have one at school for the rest of the year! However, this is where Benjamin comes into the story. Just a few days later, I get another call from Nice principal. This time she is less serious, but still matter-of-fact: "Ben was sent to the office today for threatening a little boy who cut in front of him in line. He said  "I'm going to kill you." Are you kidding me? At this point I'm thinking this is all a joke.  But it's not. I have two boys in two different classes both sent to the office during the first week of school for threatening classmates with the exact same words. Apparently, I needed this wake up call. This is not a coincidence. Apparently, this is a problem we have in our family and something needs to be done about it. So, after my feelings of utter failure as a parent, more crying, and re-evaluating my parenting choices, I decided to do a few things. First, we need to have some talks/lessons as a family about what it means to kill, how it's inappropriate to threaten to kill someone even when you don't really mean it, how serious it is to use those words because there are sometimes people who really want to hurt others and the teachers need to try and protect the children they care for. So we had several lessons and family nights discussing this exact thing. We also wrote more sorry letters, read in the scriptures about burying weapons and being peacemakers. We then buried our toy weapons in a box in the garage and made new rules about what kinds of show the boys could watch (some of them are very aggressive even if they're not killing/fighting).

That's not the end of the story. Later the next week, Peter was sent to the office to sit (not sent to the principal). He was teasing/fighting his brothers during the pick up line after school and the teacher on duty warned him several times and then he talked back to her. So, he also got to write a sorry note. This was one of those weeks/months where I felt completely defeated and a failure as a mom.  It was pretty rough, but in hindsight, I think it was a necessary wake up call to change how we were doing things in our family.

As a happy follow up to this, we had a great rest of the year and this year Peter got the same teacher that sent him to the office last year and he had to write a sorry note to for talking back to her!  She really is very nice!