September 30, 2003 - 9:51 p.m.

Uh Oh

I had a rather unpleasant experience today, thanks to the experimental four year-old in my life. Apparently at school today, B locked himself and a classmate in the bathroom and told the other little boy to take his clothes off! Nothing other than the disrobing happened, but the teachers took it very seriously, and rightly so. Since I pick B up from school, I got confronted with the incident. Ugh. I hate that sort of situation... The teacher was very reasonable about the incident; she acknowledged that kids are curious about each other's bodies and that is completely normal. Still we obviously needed to address what had happened at home and hopefully ensure it doesn't happen again. There wasn't a whole lot I could say other than to assure them we would talk about it. Also, even though we certainly don't do anything that would allow B to think that sort of behavior is acceptable, I cannot help feeling responsible to some degree.

Luckily, I was able to keep my cool and talk to B in a rational and calm way. I think I managed to impress upon him that I was not happy about what happened, to reassert guidelines about how to treat other people, as well as making sure he knew I was at least happy to know he had told the truth about what happened. It's not easy to think through all that and put it in terms a preschooler can understand.

I think B's mom had a harder time with the situation than I did. She wasn't there to see the other boy's reaction to the news, so she was worried that she would freak out. I certainly didn't get that impression at the school today, but there's no telling what she was thinking. She might have been hiding her real feelings, since we were surrounded by other parents and kids at the time... Still, I have to hope that any rational parent would realize that kids at that age are exceedingly curious about both their bodies and their social influence. B's behavioral certainly has to be nipped in the bud, but it doesn't make him a bad kid or someone her child should avoid.

That made for a very stressful day. So I am going to go curl up in bed with my book and hope that tomorrow goes a lot better!

I got the pictures from my birthday party put onto a disc, and I am in the process of uploading them to shutterfly.com. Once they are all up and captioned, I will post the link here. That way you can all have the opportunity to laugh at me and my friends in the midst of our scavenger shenanigans!

today's project: coping with the aftermath of preschool curiosity

musing about: what possessed the child...

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