Sometimes teaching your kids real-world consequences is as painful for them as it is for you.
This morning as I stood in my pajamas and flip flops, shivering slightly in my driveway, as I watched my backpack clad 5-year old walking toward the corner bus stop where a handful of other children were waiting, I was overwhelmed with a sense of anxiety and seriously questioning our decision, as Brock's parents, to make him ride the bus to school today. I was conflicted.
After an incident on the bus last Thursday that landed Brock his very first bus citation and the label of "bully" by his bus driver, I was determined to drive him to and from school for the remainder of the year, per my 5-year-old's desperate request last week following the citation. To be fair, Brock was not being a bully on the bus as we were led to believe by the message the bus driver left on Clarke's phone (let's not get into the discussion about why I hadn't been called first...I dealt with the school district about that one already). Our kindergartner was one of three children cited that day for bad behavior after Brock tried to defend a child who was being taunted by one of Brock's classmates. For the record. Brock twisted one arm, but was kicked twice by two different children, and one of those kicks was to his head. We're proud of Brock for being courageous enough to stand up for another child, but we do not advocate hurting another child, so Brock was in the wrong on that count. And we're dealing with that behavior.
Although Clarke and I are still uncomfortable with how the situation was handled, we also recognize the importance of allowing Brock the "real world" consequence of disobeying the rules. If he learns these difficult lessons now, it is our hope that he'll understand the vital importance of action and consequence and will avoid much harsher punishments for inappropriate behavior when he's older.
Today was a hard lesson for Brock to learn and for me to impose, but we're ultimately doing him a huge favor and giving him a great advantage. My first instinct this morning was to play the role of "mommy hero" and remedy Brock's discomfort following his citation by driving him to school, but sometimes doing the hard thing is also doing the right thing. And that is being a good parent.
