Thursday, October 22, 2009

Murphy's Law of Child Discipline

Murphy's Law of Child Discipline: noun. The universal law that states, "No matter how many children were perpetrating a breaking of the rules, yours will be the one that gets caught."

Philosopher Child is pretty mild mannered, all things considered. He has is snotty days like everyone else, but is mostly, well, a philosopher child. Imagine my surprise, then, when his teacher came up to me after school yesterday wanting to talk to me about a bit of trouble he had caused.

Apparently, Philosopher Child had made an obscene gesture, which I had never seen him do.* I was a bit upset, but of course I know that part of growing up is learning what is and is not socially appropriate, and this was squarely in the "not" category.

After a talk with Philosopher Child, he understood that what he did was wrong, and said he wouldn't do it again. And then...more info. This wasn't something he just up and did. He saw two other children doing it, and he simply mimicked it.

Oh, joy! I was right in thinking this didn't sound like him.

Oh, crap. Of course he's the one that got caught.

In the end, the teacher was polite and respectful and didn't fly off the deep end and demand therapy or anything like that. In fact, she, too thought this was out of character for him. In her view, what's done is done and it probably won't happen again.





*...never seen him do with one exception: he once was playing with his fingers and stuck both his middle fingers up, but of course had no idea that it meant anything at all.

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