averygoodun42 | hummm part 2

Babe just woke up fifteen minutes ago. He got to sleep before ten last night. He was one tired little puppy yesterday, me thinks.

I think he might be coming down with a little cold again.

I also think I figured out what all of us did wrong in dealing with him yesterday, but I'm not sure how to figure out how to mesh the school's rules with what Babe needs.

The explanation I got out of Babe yesterday (in the car, after both of us had calmed down enough) was that he didn't want to hold his teacher's hand because his classmate has poked him.

I pieced together the story, and what it sounds like is that while they were standing in line for carpool (the line of parent's cars at the beginning and end of the day), his classmate poked him. He poked her back, of course, which led to more poking on both sides, and then they were separated. However, I'm guessing here, but I think there were still hieghtened tempers, because Babe then said they started swinging their bags at each other.

Then, ss he said, "We were really separated."

Anyway, the result of that little skirmish was that his temper was up, and, well, do you like to be constrained when your temper is up? I sure don't.

So anyway, the way to deal with him when he's like that is to send him off on his own. Get him away from everyone so he has time to cool down. Do NOT crowd him, do NOT hold him, just let him alone. (I'm slowly learning, and I often forget, like I did yesterday.)

However, the problem is that during carpool, they can't really just send a kid off on his or her own, even if it is in a fence-protected area. It assumes that the kid will come when called, and if the kid doesn't come when called, it'll delay the whole works. (Granted that I'm usually one of the last to arrive to pick Babe up.)

Well, there's an open house thing at the school tomorrow evening, so maybe we can work something out with the teachers/director about picking Babe up when he's in a temper. Because I like their rule about needing to hold the kid's hand until the kid is in the car; it's a very sensible rule and I don't want Babe to sneak his way around that. But, when his temper is up... Maybe they can just let him cool off in the playground and wave me ahead to park and pick him up on foot... I don't know. There's gotta be a compromise somewhere, though.

Anyway, I feel bad about not dealing with him well yesterday. I should have done something differently, though even now I'm not sure what I could have done at the time. Not with the car running and blocking the drive, anyway. I couldn't leave him in the drive and pull up to park without him panicking and doing something REALLY dangerous, but at the same time, letting him do it himself (i.e. no hand-holding) wasn't really an option either.

*sigh* Parenting is tough.

And now I need to go finish the stuff on my to-do list from yesterday. While I still have the car. :-)