Too Little, Too Much

I feel like all week I've spent a huge amount of time at my boys' school or dealing with school stuff. If it's like this at pre-k and 1st grade I can't imagine what it's like in middle or high school.

First off, a kid has been really mean to Jack this week and I sent an email to his teacher on Tuesday and have had no reply. So that's annoying. The kid wasn't just verbally mean but took his food and threw it in the trash. I know the kid's mum and I can say something to her if I have to but wanted the teacher to deal with it too.   I spent a long time researching "how to teach your child to be more assertive" this week to see how I can help him stick up for himself. Those of you that know Jack are probably laughing at this since he's so social but he's definitely impressionable and has a very sweet and sensitive side.  So we've been working on tactics, like not backing down, looking people in the eye, saying NO, calling out a bully by name etc. One thing we did was role-play and when I was playing the "meanie" it back-fired on me as Danny came up, defending his big brother,  and spat in my face. Nice.

Which leads me to Daniel and the spitting. This week he has used spitting as his anger/tantrum response. That has resulted in him being banned from electronics and going to bed early on his own (which he hates). So we've had tears and tantrums but obviously it's not something I'm going to relent on. So then I have also been researching "how to teach your child to deal with anger".

Look at that for a moment. One kid needs to be more assertive and one kid needs to be less assertive. I do wish they had just a iddy-biddy bit more of each other's DNA.