An Angel, She Is Not (Sometimes Anyway)

The day before yesterday, I picked DD up from school, as usual.  I know that this will change as she gets older, but for now, whenever she does something wrong, she runs right up to me and starts confessing.  Sort of.  She's a spinner, always trying to put things in the best light.  In part, this is because she knows that I can see when she's had a color change to indicate that she'd not had the best of days.  I know that she believes that I look every day, but I very often forget, just because she doesn't usually get in trouble.  We have been very fortunate in that regard.  DD is high spirited, and very active, but she also tries to be a friend and a helper to most of the other kids and her teachers.

Not so on Monday.  But all I could get out of her was that she'd actually been doing quite a good job of cleaning up, and the teacher just didn't understand for some reason.  (The teacher's note on the daily sheet said that she'd told DD several times to stop playing in one area and start participating in some other activity.)  And then there was a little incident involving another little girl, H.  I wasn't quite getting the story from DD, but the daily sheet advised us that DD had whacked H in the face - near the eye - on purpose.  Ahem.  Sounds like deja vu, all over again.  Except with DD in the wrongdoer role.

On the way home, still trying to pull the story out of her, I asked DD how what she'd done to H was different than what L had done to her a couple of weeks ago.  She immediately said that A had suggested that L throw the dinosaur at her, but no one told her to hit H.  She was quite pleased with this comparison, until I suggested that whacking someone all on your own was worse.

We gave DD a choice when we got home.  She was going to be punished for deliberately hitting another child.  But, she needed to tell us what happened.  If she didn't, she would receive a second punishment.  And, if she decided to tell us what happened, but we later learned that she lied about things, she would receive a third punishment.  In the end, DD received one punishment, which for us involves taking something away that she values quite a bit. 

So, without further adieu, I give you the incident between DD and H on Monday, embellished with the detail that we'd learned from her teacher.

(Scene:  Circle time.  Children taking turns reading each word contained in their packages of sight words.  As the curtain rises, it's H's turn.  DD is sitting next to her.)

H:  The word is "go."

DD:  (snottily, I'm sure).  It is not!  The word is "good."  (waves packages of word cards in H's face.)

H:  "Go!"

DD:  NNNNNNNNOOOOOO.    "Good!"

{{{{{{{{ WHACK! }}}}}}}}

To her credit(?), I understand that the word actually was "good."  And while I've often imagined doing what DD did in practice to people at work (and ironically, I was probably in a meeting at the same time DD was in circle time, wishing I actually could whack someone from across the table for being dumber than a box of rocks), we need to work on controlling our feelings of self-righteousness a bit. 

I sent an e-mail to the mom on Monday night, apologizing for what DD had done.  That was one of the things that really, really irritated me about L's parents.  They never acknowledged that there were other people who were affected by their son's behavior.  It's not fun to do it, but it must be done.  DD needed to apologize face-to-face, which I understand she readily did, but we also needed to let the other parents know that we knew our daughter had wronged their child, and to tell the other parents that we too were sorry. 

H's mom was very gracious, not believing that DD ever could have done anything on purpose, adding that H was not injured in the least.  I replied and told her that at that point we didn't know the whole story, but we were fairly certain that DD had done the deed deliberately, or at least recklessly.

So, that's that.  DD's punishment will extend into next week (loss of a big privilege for her).  H's birthday party is coming up, and I told DD that if I were H, I might cordially un-invite her for being so mean.  This shocked DD, because she apparently believed that once a birthday invitation goes out, it is an irrevocable agreement of sorts.  DH said that the next morning, while he was getting the facts from DD's teacher, DD sought H out, hugged her, apologized again, and casually asked whether she was still invited to the party.  With a big sigh of relief, DD ran over to DH and told him that the party was still on.

So, drama over.  And we really need to work with DD on the self-righteousness issue.  One of the advantages of using donor eggs is that I can smugly think to myself that if it has anything to do with her genes, it didn't come from me.

Wait a minute . . .  Smug.  Self-righteous.  Ahem.  Probably environmental, eh?

Comments

[kami]

Good story.