My daughter learned a valuable lesson today. It broke my heart in a million pieces that she had to learn this particular lesson at such a small age, but she did and i am so proud of her.
I picked her up from school today in the brand new carpool lane. Usually i walk in and pick her up at her room, giving me a chance to say hi to her teachers and chat with the other moms. we then walk the long hallway back to the car, giving me a small chance to hear some tidbit of what they did that day. overhearing other kids dole out small pieces of info to their mothers gives me even more insight into the mysterious day at preschool she has just spent.
but today, i sat in my car as she skulked out of the building (first unusual occurrence- skulking.) a teacher strapped her into my car, we said our good-byes and drove off down the street. her body looked somewhat like a mix between a deflated balloon and a heavy sack of potatoes thrown into the seat. she could barely keep her chin off her chest. it took me the rest of the drive home (i went the long way, which took us six minutes longer than the two minutes it usually takes), and an additional 20 minutes inside the house, but i finally was able to piece together, via her small snippets of information, what had happened.
Evidently, her very good friend asked M to "scare" another good friend. (I don't know what that involved.) M did not want to do it, but she did it anyway. The other friend (who got "scared") cried. The first friend (the "scare"er) got in trouble. M did not.
In my three-year-old's world, her conscience alerted her to her first bout of guilt today. She felt bad that she had made her friend cry. She felt mad that she had gone along with the first friend, even though she hadn't wanted to. After we discussed the scenario a few times, and i felt confident that i understood the whole situation, we talked about how to say, "no" when she doesn't want to do something. i also told her that her feeling bad was actually a good thing- this may have been a bit over her little head. But i explained that she felt sad and bad because she was such a good person. that feeling those feelings meant that she knew what was right and wrong and that the next time she would choose to do the right thing.
She learned some things today that take some of us years and years (and many, many mistakes) to learn- that saying NO to a cool kid is never easy, and that making someone cry is one of the worst feelings in the world. i'm glad that we were able to figure it out together, and that she was able to conjure up a smile afterwards, but i hate that we are even beginning to broach these subjects. i really thought we'd at least make it to kindergarten before peer pressure and guilt began to rule our lives... i guess things just happen a lot sooner nowadays.
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