A follow up on school behavior.

Putting a four year old into a real-life elementary school situation has been interesting, to say the least. Last week I wrote a post about the Mouse lying for the first time to me, and how I think us placing pressure on him with the ‘stop light behavior’ chart might have had something to do with it. So we’ve had a little bit of time to work on things, and I thought I would follow up with what was working and what hasn’t.

First off, we haven’t had any more fibbing about the color dot he comes home with {or anything else for that manner}. I’m not sure if that’s just because we scared the bejesus out of him when it happened, or if the husband and I have been a little bit better about not placing so much importance on the color dot he’s coming home with {or maybe a little bit of both}. I make it a rule now that asking him what color he came home with is not the first {or even the second} thing that comes out of my mouth when I pick him up at the end of the day. I make sure we talk about what he did, what he liked, who he got to play with etc. first. Honestly, I try not to even bring it up until we get home, get a snack, and then open his backpack together.

It seems to be going better this way, although he HAS come home with yellow once since this whole thing started – and that’s okay. He knew that he had to stay on green so many days in a row in order to achieve his goal and get his reward. He was a little upset about it, but not devastated … and the next day he came home with green and was ready to start counting down on his chart again.

This morning was actually parent-teacher conference day for us as well, which was a new experience for me. I felt like I was in trouble, sitting outside of the pre-k room, in the tiniest chair EVER in that long hallway … and then was called into the room by the teacher. It was seriously funny how absolutely nervous I was! The teacher was so great though, and really nice about explaining where the Mouse was, and how he was doing in class. She talked about how he was so detail oriented – especially when he cuts and glues and colors. He does well with raising his hand, and working both independently, but also gets along well with his classmates.

Areas for opportunity were anticipated … and we chatted about those, but she wasn’t worried about any of them. She laughed hysterically when I told her about the lying thing, and how I was ‘never ever ever supposed to go in the backpack – EVER’. The general consensus was: the Mouse is a typical four-year-old … there is some maturation needed there, but he’s a sweet and enthusiastic kid, and she seemed genuinely excited that he was apart of the class.

Momma was proud.

So while I know that by no means will this be the last disciplinary issue that we have with the Mouse and his school, it’s nice that I’m learning how to deal with all of this as well. I will be the first one to tell you that I’m an over-reactor {who, me?!} … I just need to learn when it’s needed, and when not.