Learning Life's Lessons

I post this with DD#2's permission.....

My darling 6 year old Abs who loves everyone and is the most caring and giving person I have ever met, now has an "assault" record at school. This is the child who saves one of her two cookies for her sister who might not get one. She asks for an extra piece of candy to share with her sister who is not there. She draws pictures on cards in church and hurries to give them, along with a hug, to the most unlikely people - the ones who seem to her to have a problem or sit alone. If something doesn't quite work out, she swallows her disappointment and says that's okay, we'll do it / see it / hear it some other time. Unfortunately, her exposure to the real world is beginning to change her.

The "assault" was actually Abs' biting another first-grade child. The other child insisted the table was a desk and Abs couldn't convince her otherwise and in frustration bit the other child to make her point. I received the news as I picked Abs up from school. The sentence was one day in In School Suspension (ISS). The same teacher who related the incident, also told me Abs has just been placed in the "Gifted Child" program. How incongruous.

Abs was quite excited to be going to a new class (ISS). Her sister and I tried to explain that it was not an honor or a "lark," but we couldn't dampen her enthusiasm. I asked her if any of her friends went to ISS.
"Only one," she told me.
"What does she go for?" I asked.
"She cries all the time," Abs answered.

The "assault" happened yesterday and Abs duly spent today in ISS.
"How did it go?" I asked her.
"It was great," she answered. "I got a lot of help with my math and there were only four people in there."
"Do you want to go again?" I questioned.
"NO way!" she said.
Well, maybe it had the desired effect. It just seems a little extreme that if she ever has another transgression that someone can look back and say "Well look here, she bit someone in the first grade."

Of course, I grew up in a home where getting in trouble in school was not the worst thing that could happen to you. Depending on the transgression, the punishment you received at home could be far worse. The teacher was almost always in the right, and was certainly presumed so until proven otherwise. So it was with my children, and so with theirs. That is why Abs is sleeping in her own bed tonight instead of camping with friends. We can only hope that tough lessons learned early in life will lead to responsible decisions.