Let me just say this first, Noah loves school! He's been in Kindergarten for over 100 days now. (See picture above for his 100 Days of School Project. That alien has 100 eyes!) He is flourishing and growing. He is reading. He loves math - which he gets from his daddy. He's problem-solving and using inferencing skills. He understands cause and effect. He makes predictions. He colors in the lines - mostly. He can write his full name. He's telling time and counting money. He can count to 109 without stopping - that he is so proud of! He does his homework first thing before asking to play. He is learning about responsibility, but he is also learning about boundaries and respect.
In Kindergarten, behavior is measured on a color scale. Everyone starts the day with green. Green is good. If you have a really good day, you move up to purple and if it's exceptional, you get pink! Pink is the coveted color because if you get that, you get to pick out a prize from the treasure box. If you need to be warned about your behavior several times throughout the day, you move down the color scale to yellow. If you still can't listen after multiple warnings, you get red which is a visit to the principal's office. And the naughtiest color of all, in the words of Noah, is blue. And that gets you a note home because you've been super naughty.
Noah is an exceptional child. He is so well-behaved and desires to please Cody and me. Every day of school he comes home with either green, purple or pink as his awarded color. We couldn't be prouder!
But for the first time this school year, Noah came home with a yellow.
I picked him up from school that Friday and was met with a very tearful boy. He knew he had been naughty, felt awful about it, was worried we would be mad and also understood he'd be in trouble. See, Cody and I had already set the expectation when school started that Noah was not to get anything lower that green on the color chart.
His teacher met me in the pick up area of the school to explain his tears and why he got yellow. Noah just couldn't stop talking when she was talking, so after many direct warnings, she moved him down the color chart.
At first, I was mad my son had been disrespectful and then I had this humbling feeling of nostalgia, but not in the warm and fuzzy kinda way. I remember always, and I mean always, getting marked on my report card "student talks out of turn" or "student cannot control verbal behavior during class discussions". Yes, I was a talker. A chatterbox. I suffered from verbal diarrhea at a small age...
Now while Noah's inherited need to talk doesn't excuse his behavior, it does help his mommy relate. Oh, to be on the other side of this as the parent! The irony.
His teacher just felt awful for giving him yellow, but I'm glad she stuck to her guns. Noah needs to learn appropriate behavior in school. If he doesn't learn it now when he's little, he'll never learn it when he's in junior high. And trust me, you don't want a pre-teen acting a fool in class. That's too much work for the teacher, said this former teacher.
So after much discussion with Noah about needing to listen, "your teacher should only have to ask you once" and "everyone has yellow days"....And then discussion with Cody about Noah's punishment, we settled on a spanking, no video games or tv for the night and a hand-written apology to his teacher which Noah delivered Monday.
Unfortunately, since this incident in January, Noah has had another yellow offense. This time Daddy was home to deliver the spanking...Hopefully our little chatterbox has learned his lesson.
