the checkmark

These last few weeks have been a blur! Lauren's start to kindergarten has been fantastic. She loves it! The only thing she complains about is that she's tired in the morning. I've been moving her bedtime earlier and earlier, but she's still tired in the morning. It's hard to get going before the sun comes up! She transitioned very easily into kindergarten. In fact, I think the only person who had an emotional time with it was Josh. It was very hard for him to have Lauren gone all day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and not with him at his "school" Tuesday and Thursday. A pretty bad ear infection to boot and he has not been a happy camper. He seems to be getting more used to it, knowing she is coming home and that generally she is happy to see him!

Then came today. She got home from school and immediately started picking on Josh. She just would not leave him alone and was warned about her behavior. Then she actually hit him in the ear with a toy. After some significant time in her room, she still would not tell me what was bothering her. She was defiant, argumentative, disobeying, not listening and generally foul all evening. Of course she had a couple of very nice moments, but they were few and far between. Let me just say that Lauren is a limit-tester, like most kids, but she takes it to the Nth degree. She seeks out the limits to know how far she can go then she usually backs off. I think she gets comfort in knowing there's a limit and where it is. Tonight that was not the case. She kept crossing the line over and over.

Finally, she was getting ready for bed, I asked her a question about brushing her teeth and she outright lied to me. It was very minor situation, but why the lie? After I called her on the lie, she broke down very dramatically and ran to her room. I followed her in and sat on her bed. She then blurted out that she got a checkmark at school today. Her teacher uses checkmarks on the board to help correct behavior. We just talked about the checkmarks earlier this week and she was mortified that I actually asked her if she had received one. Well, today was the day. Through sobs she informed me that she ran in the hall to try and catch up to the boy in front of her and received a checkmark. The tears were literally shooting out of her eyes. We talked about why she got the checkmark and the fact that her teacher was not pointing out that she was a bad girl, but that she made a bad choice in choosing to run in the hall. And that no matter how many checkmarks she gets, her daddy and I will always love her. She was obviously embarassed and feeling very bad about it.

This is going to sound very strange, but as I left her room, I actually felt proud that she felt so bad. Not that I like seeing her so very sad and being so hard on herself, but it gave me a sense that she understands right from wrong and that she takes "correction" seriously.

I guess we'll see if she runs in the hall again : )