Everything I don't know

Deaglan likes to jump. And climb. And wrestle his brother to the ground.

All the time.

He’s crazy about trains and motor vehicles and he often builds odd contraptions. He somehow manages to find lengths of ribbon, yarn or string with which he ties things (our kitchen chairs for example) together. Sometimes these are elaborate “orange squeezers” or spaceships. I don’t often get it but I’m trying real hard.

On the weekend, he drew me a picture of two mustachioed skeletons on violet construction paper with his new washable Crayola markers. He told me that it was my reward for “being a good citizen.”

Finally, someone notices, I thought.

And today after his second day at Big School, when I asked him what his teacher was like, he told me quietly that he didn’t like her much because “Mommy she doesn’t talk like you.” I resisted the urge to ask “You mean she doesn’t scream like a banshee because you refuse to listen unless something’s been repeated 57 times?” I searched for a scrap of paper instead, to write it down, just the way he’d said it. Sometimes in my rare, better parenting moments, I let my instincts guide me. I do the thing that seems counterintuitive.

I listen.

When I asked him what he meant, he said that his teacher got mad (a lot) at the kids because they were being silly. I pictured this poor woman, frazzled, demanding some order; 25 four and five year olds in her charge, some who’d never before been in a structured setting, freshly released from their mothers’ arms.

“Were you being silly?” I asked.

“No Mommy, I was waiting in line to go outside. That’s what we were supposed to do!”

Geez, who is this magician of a teacher? I wanted to ask.

I don’t always know what's called for in a situation, how to handle each new thing that comes up. At those times, I mostly stay quiet till I figure it out.