"R" is for Revenge?

This week Alex’s class is studying R. For show and tell he took his Robin action figure (i.e., Batman & Robin). We’ve had an interesting week. There was almost no snow at our house Tuesday and we’d really been looking forward to Wednesday and kindergarten orientation. Unfortunately, Wednesday was a bust. Due to the icy weather the kindergarten open house was cancelled. I thought Alex would be upset but he took it pretty well. I told him they were going to reschedule, so he’d still get to go and see everything. He was in a good mood – until we got to school.

Those of you that think the little monkey-boy is fairly sweet should probably skip this part. We got to school and everyone was already playing and running around. The boys were building things with Legos. As I told him goodbye one of his classmates walked by, carrying a Lego tower in front of him. Alex reached out and just smashed it in two. The kid started crying and Alex would only growl, “Sorry.” I thought it was a frustration thing about having to come to school at all. I should have known better.

When I picked him up I went in to ask his teacher if he’d had a good day. Not so much. She asked if I’d ever heard him talk about Hunter. I knew there was a Hunter in the 3-year-old class but hadn’t heard anything about him from Alex. Turns out that the day went on as it started. Hunter is fairly new and there has been some trouble between him and the other boys (mostly Alex). Alex admits that he had four, maybe five, time-outs on Wednesday. He couldn’t pin it down more than that. Alex (and other witnesses!) says that Hunter called him a “baby” and tripped him. Our little darling spat on him. Lovely, no? He skipped right above time-out to visit with the school director.

When Mrs. Karen asked why he and Hunter were having such trouble, Alex replied, “Apparently, I don’t like him.” He also said that he wanted to hit him because he called him a baby and tripped him. Karen probably held it together better than I would. She pointed out that we can’t hit (or spit on) people we don’t like. She also mentioned to me that Hunter has been playing with Alex’s two best buddies and that may have caused some jealousy issues. She decided to have a class wide discussion on behavior the next day because when the spitting occurred another classmate said, “Wait to go, Alex!” Did I mention there are only two girls in Alex’s class? Neither was involved in any of the spitting, hitting, tripping or name-calling. Sigh. Maybe they need to recruit more girls.

I told Alex if we had any more trouble we would first take away TV, then Bakugan toys, and then, I just didn’t know. He asked what that meant. I told him it’d be something so horrible he wouldn’t want to think about it. I’ll keep you posted!