Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Anatomical Woes

The students wanted to go to the Theater but certain tasks had to be accomplished first, certain tasks such as cleaning up from snack and running everyone through the potty mill. The moments surrounding meal times are becoming my least favorite moments of the day. There is always someone that must be prodded, chided, coaxed, or wrangled back to the table to clean up their lunch or to the potty. Its like they enjoy peeing on the floor. One little boy, Caillou, and I have a strained relationship when it comes to potty time. Our relationship, however strained, has indeed progressed. Yesterday, while angry that he was sitting on the toilet after putting himself there, screamed out at me, "Hold down my penis." I replied, "Dude, you got this one." Still hysterically crying, "Nooooooo, I want you to hold my penis down, I'm peeing on my leeeeeeeeeeggggggg." Ahhhh, Wipe it offffff, wipe it offffff." (I did not hold it down. I cleaned up the catastrophe after but I didn't hold it down. Was that wrong?)

Today we started our morning on the playground with some older kids. Caillou had been on the playground for a total of 10 minutes when apparently an older girl thought it would be great to run up and punch him in the penis. "She did what?" I think they left out these types of post-war resolutions and fly-by terrorist attacks from Early Childhood Development class specifically to test our creativity at dealing with such negotiations. I pulled the kindergartner girl aside. At first she claimed he had hit her but knowing for sure that it wasn't his M.O. to hit a girl twice his size I asked her again if she was sticking with that story. She then said she just did it because she thought it would be fun. I turned to Caillou and asked him if he thought it was fun. Nope, he did not like it. I told her that punching kids in their privates was not cool. Did I really need to even say that? I thought that was universal. Apparently not.