Sometimes, the Boy can be his own worst enemy. It’s true of all kids his age — and older. He’ll get upset about something, fuss about it, then escalate it when the resolution doesn’t appear to be going his way. The trick is to get him to see that habit and stop it.
Today he was upset about something. About what, it doesn’t really matter, but it involved L, who was helping me clean the bathrooms in preparation for the Boy’s birthday party Saturday. We have too much to do in too little time, so some of Friday’s cleaning shifted to today. The incident spilled over to a whine-fest with his mother, then with me. I sat him down and talked to him about what was going on.
“We’re all getting things ready for you. For your party. Every single thing we’re doing, we’re doing it for you. I think if someone was doing this much for me, I wouldn’t be upset because they weren’t paying enough attention to me at that moment. I’d be thankful. I’d say, ‘What can I do to help?'”
He calmed himself down with the little breathing exercise I taught him — basically, slow, measured breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth — and then went to ask K if there was anything he could do to help. She set him to washing dishes, a chore he adores.
“Thank you for showing me how fun it is to work together today,” he told me in the midst of his toothbrush session. “If I’d kept fussing, I would have missed out on a lot of fun.”
Later that night, as we read Tashi in bed, Tashi had an opportunity to escape from bad guys who’d kidnapped him. He ran by the river, where he saw the wife of the Chief Bad Guy drowning. I stopped.
“Do you think Tashi should stop and help her?”
“No!” the Boy said incredulously.
“Why not?”
“Because she’s his enemy. If he helps her, she might just grab him and take him back to the other bad guys,” he explained earnestly.
“Or,” I said, thinking carefully how I could explain it, “she could be so impressed and touched that he helped her that she stops being his enemy.”
“Yeah, but in Smurfs: the Lost Village, when [some character whose name I don’t remember] fell of the boat and the Smurfs helped him out of the water, he said, ‘Yeah, but I’m still bad!’ and captured them. And it was their boat. They made it themselves!” His patience in explaining that was enchanting.
“Yes, that happens sometimes,” I replied, “but sometimes, something different happens. Sometimes they stop being enemies.” I knew this was going to happen in the book, and it rings true in my own life.
Just today, I had an encounter with a student that made me feel I was in Groundhog Day. During morning duty, I’m charged with keeping all the kids sitting in the hall quietly and the hall calm and to do this, we teachers enforce a basic rule: “You can whisper, but you can’t talk.” Suzie — not her real name, of course — always talks. She speaks in a fairly low voice, but she’s engaging her vocal cords, which means she’s talking. Plus, I can occasionally hear her thirty or forty feet away.
“Suzie, whisper please,” I said calmly. Respectfully. As I’ve done every day I’m on duty for the entire school year. Her response is to quiet her voice at first but to continue talking, not whispering. Her response to being redirected again is to suggest that because other people are also talking, that I’m unfairly targeting her. Today I explained the simple fact: “That’s because you’ve taught me to expect it from you. The other people are not consistently disobeying me. The other students do it once and a while; you do it every single day.” Again — quietly, calmly, respectfully.
Today, I talked to her about it again. It turns out, she doesn’t know what whispering is. “I am whispering,” she insisted. I explained again that if she puts her hand on her throat when she talks and she feels vibrations, she’s not whispering.
“Go ahead, try,” I said, smiling.
“No!” she cried, breaking into a smile herself. “It’s embarrassing!’
I pointed out to her that I wasn’t picking on her, that I in fact like her a lot and see a lot of potential in her. “As long as you can keep these little things under control.” (She also has a tendency to grow increasingly disrespectful when redirected multiple times.)
Here’s a girl that could have easily become my enemy. I could have simply snapped at her, signed her discipline card, or by this time, probably, simply have written an administrative referral. But instead of seeing an enemy, a rebellious little brat (like many adults would), I try to see something a little different: someone who just hasn’t had anyone take the time to show a genuine interest in her regarding the little things. It’s easier just to brush if off with sarcasm or a referral.
The funny thing is, in spite of the fact that she still grows disrespectful with me, I’m fairly certain she doesn’t see me as an enemy either. Sure, it’s not the same as saving the life of the wife of the bandit who threatened to pull all your nose hairs out like Tashi did, but it’s moving in that direction.