Tear-Jerk-Er

The other day I had to stay after school and talk to Jett's teacher because he hit someone in class. Actually this was the second child he hit during class. I knew something was up when all of the other students had been dismissed from the class, and Kai and I found ourselves alone in an empty hallway. Uh-oh. Again? Again? Didn't we just do this on Monday? That's when the teacher beckoned me inside.



There was Jett, sitting on his space on the floor, all bundled up in his winter coat and snowpants, sweating in the warm room. I knew he must have misbehaved, but darn it, he looked cute sitting there with his little flushed cheeks and blonde hair poking out under his hat.

So the teacher told me what happened, and I like to think of it as a minor incident. He lightly pushed someone in the coat closet. But I was mortified and worried anyway. So mortified and worried that when the teacher told me, I had to hold the wall to steady myself. I hear all of you snickering at my weakness, but you see how you feel when your child hits two kids in one week and you find yourself in conference with the teacher in a sweltering preschool classroom for the second time in four days. If you are at all like me you will hear only half of what the teacher is saying. But you will hear all of what your brain is saying, and your brain will be screaming at the top of it's lungs that your child is not going to graduate from high school or even get in to third grade because he hit two kids in preschool. Simultaneously while the teacher talked and my brain screamed, I started worrying that Jett and Charlie and I would develop a reputation among the parents as that family. That family with the kid who hit two kids on one week. Selfishly, I find this particularly mortifying because now I have preschool mom friends! Friends who I want to keep and who I want to have over for play dates! It did not help that his teacher emphasized the fact that the two kids he hit were girls. As if he has a problem with women already. (Cue the brain: more worry, coming up)!

So we talked, and the teacher was nice because she is a parent herself and she was not really phased by the whole thing and blah blah blah. I was trying to appear calm and composed the whole time, but she may have caught on to my near-fainting spell because she talked on and on about how normal it was, and just a phase, and a myriad of other things probably designed to keep me standing upright. Eventually the room stopped spinning and I was able to step away from the wall I had been leaning on (nonchalantly, I hope). Eventually she stopped talking and I stopped mumbling in reply and I gathered up the boys, thanked the teacher for talking with me, and started out the door.

But I don't know. I was so mortified and worried and mad. But he's so little and his cheeks were pink and flushed and his hair was so cute poking out from under his hat. And he had sat and listened to everything we said and I looked down at his little snow-suited-up-self, and I just bent down and hugged him.

He said, "Thanks, Mama. How did you know I needed a hug?"