At Lily's school the way kindergartners are disciplined is with colored tickets. Everyday they start on green if you have a behavior problem your ticket is pulled and you are on blue, then yellow, then orange, then RED. At red you go visit the principal.
Lily had her ticket pulled one time on August 15th. She remembers the date and talks about it all the time. Until last week that is, last week Lily had her ticket pulled three days in a row. She came home on blue: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Last Friday there was a special treat for Kindergartners, they were allowed to come to school in Pajamas and watch the movie Polar Express after the movie the kids had hot chocolate with marshmallows and cookies. Everyone could go to the party except kid's whose ticket was pulled MORE than three times in that week. Lily thought the teacher had said if your ticket is pulled three times you cannot go, I thought that too. So she went to school on Friday thinking she was going to have to stay behind while all the kids went to the movie, except her and two boys who have their tickets pulled everyday.
You would think that Lily would be absolutely devastated by this punishment. She seemed to be more bring it on than upset. Everyday that week she would come home and ask me questions about having her ticket pulled. What happens if I come home on blue? What happens if I come home on yellow? What happens if I come home on orange? What happens if I come home on red? She would repeat the questions over and over again in the same sitting or in an hour later. I am not sure but I think this is a part of her receptive language delay, Lily asks the same question 5 million times in a row. Used to drive me crazy, now that I understand that processing the answer to the question takes her a bit longer I no longer mind repeating. Sometimes I just keep repeating until she gets it. Sometimes I get creative and try alternative ways of getting the information into her pretty little head. Lots of physical gestures and rephrasing. Although I have to be careful with the rephrasing, because sometimes that makes it worse, instead of having one sentence of information trying to get in her head now she has two different sentences trying to get in and this causes a lot of frustration.
I had a choice while Lily asked all those questions. A choice between making a super big deal out of having her ticket pulled of reinforcing the teacher or not. I chose to let the punishment stand and not make a huge deal out of the ticket pulling. I am not entirely sure I made the right choice but there it is, my choice. Every time Lily asked me about having her ticket pulled, What will happen if...? My reply was a simple, I will say, "I hope you come home on green tomorrow." Lily thought and thought about this and asked me and asked me. I know she was thinking, so what is the big deal anyways, nothing bad is going to happen. I am choosing to allow the ticket pulling itself be the punishment. She has to walk to the front of the room in front of the entire class and pull her ticket. That is really hard for little miss I hate to be criticised. And she has to pull her ticket without throwing a fit, without telling the teacher to shut her big fat mouth, like she tells me when I have her go stand in the corner or I take away her favorite toys for the day. So that is the punishment and at home I simply say to Lily, I hope you come home on green tomorrow. I thought very long and hard about this decision and like I said, I am not entirely sure that it is the right one, we shall see.
One side effect of all the ticket pulling has been that Lily has come out of her shell. The entire school year she has insisted that she have the exact same lunch everyday. She brings her lunch box and eats all the exact same foods, put in the box in the exact same way everyday. All of a sudden she no longer wants to bring her lunch she wants to buy her lunch. Yesterday she bought her lunch for the first time and she loved it. Now she wants to buy everyday. She went from having to have everything just so to wanting to try new things. She also informs me that she no longer wishes for me to walk her to and from the bus stop. I didn't let her have her way on that one.
I am wondering if this is all just a growing spurt. Perhaps the social part of her brain is growing and I am seeing a bunch of changes all at once. Or is this a result of living through having her ticket pulled three times. Her biggest fear come to life and now she is no longer afraid of what might happen if... One thing is for sure, the Lily I know at home is beginning to surface at school. Strong, loud, defiant and fun Lily has started kindergarten. The quiet obedient little girl who was sitting in Lily's seat these past four months seems to be out to lunch. It makes me happy that she is feeling more confident at school. Relaxing enough to make mistakes. I think it will help her in her development immensely. I am not sure her teachers will agree.
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4 comments:
It sounds like she might be feeling a bit more confident in school and might not need her comfort things (such as a lunch of the exact same foods packed the exact same way) as much as she used to.
it does sound like her confidence is coming along nicely!
ethan's class had a similar system last year in kindergarten -- something about moving your clothespin to different color flowers. he had to move to the not-perfect color flower a few times in a row. he was so upset worrying about it, even though he was doing fine, that he actually threw up! poor little guy. i told the teacher, you better lay off on the colored flowers for a while.
She is coming out of her shell. Keep in mind that it is an exciting time for the kids so maybe that is why she is loosing her tickets. We went through this with Jake, except that he did not really seem to care when he went to yellow or red, or the time out chair even. So at first, I just told him that he is not to get to red, that it is disappointing and I know he can do better. Still did not care. So the rule became if you get a yellow you loose TV or computer time for the day, his pick which one, if he gets a red he looses both. That seemed to work. In the past two months he has only had 3 yellows the rest were greens. When school first started we saw lots of red! I think it takes them a while to get it. Lily is trying to see how big a deal it really is and she is questioning you because you are the one that she does not want to disappoint. She already knows the teachers reaction and how she feels now she wants to see if it really matters to you. I think your not reacting is bugging her, so it probably is a good thing, but if it continues you might want to consider consequences at home. I would wait though until she goes back to school in January, see if she is still in the spirit of the holidays! HA!
Scratching my head.
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