Friday, April 10, 2009

Life lessons start early and cause much pain.

I was working at home yesterday. The phone rang. I looked at it to see if I needed to answer it or not. My son's daycare name was listed.

Oh no, I thought. Please don't be sick, please don't be sick, please don't be sick.

I answered, and the center director was calling about Mateo. The first thing she said was that it's been a long time since she's had to call me.

"I know....," I answered, as in: Why ARE you calling me???

Basically, it happened like this: Mateo was playing with an xylophone when another child decided they wanted to play with it (the incorrect pronoun use is on purpose in case - this is how it was told to me...stay with me). A slight scuffle ensued because Mateo, being the xylophone loving fool that he is, didn't want to give up the instrument to the other child. That was when SHE scratched him. Right on his cute little chubby cheek. Everyone is fine, he got the scratch cleaned, so on and so forth.

Now, I found it really interesting that the director wanted to hide the gender of the student and then slipped when she said "...she scratched his cheek...." I think they don't ever want to give away the idenity of the other student who did the hurting or who got hurt because they don't want the parents to get into it like some crazed sports mom/dad rivalry thing. There aren't many girls in Mateo's room, but still, I was never going to figure it out.

My first concern was if he was okay, and then it was whether he did anything back to her. I hate the idea of him hurting another child even though I know it's part of being a kid. As long as he's not bleeding to death or has a broken bone or has been ruthlessly attacked by a rabid monkey child, I'm never going to get mad when a scuffle ensues. It's part of life. At least a 2-year old's life. I get the feeling my take on the situation is very opposite from most parent's take because the director always seems to fear confrontation after she tells me when something happens.

When I went into his room at daycare, I was greeted with my scratched-cheek boy, who was as happy as ever.

His teacher told me that he only cried right when it happened and then was soon over it. Sounds just like my boy.

I told the ladies that I told my husband he needs to start teaching Mateo that when lady wants something of his, Mateo needs to just hand it over immediately and save himself some trouble.

Ain't that the truth? I think so.

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