The Art of Apology

Little man got himself in some trouble today.  The offense involved his fingernails and a little girl's leg and the end result wasn't pretty.  The little girl ran up to show me the minute I stepped foot in his class room to pick him up; their teacher hurried behind her muttering, "they always get to the parents before I do."

Apparently little man's been showing some aggressive behavior recently, although this is the first time we have heard about it.  According to his teacher, the whole class has been off kilter and high strung and the majority of the kids are acting out.  She's been trying to calm and redirect the frazzled energy.  The weather's getting hot, summer's plugging along, and there's transition looming for many of the kids that will be moving on to kindergarten next year.  Ashagre's last day at this school is August 9th and his first day of class at his new school is August 24th.

Fortunately, I think Brent and I nailed the parenting on this one.  After getting the facts from teacher I didn't say anything to Ashagre.  He had just woken up from his nap and was still teetering in the netherworld in which, when given the chance, he can ease back into the real world his happy, silly self or, if challenged or frustrated, travel down a much less pleasant path.  I let him wake up and made sure to let him know he was loved and that I was happy to see him (not easy to do when I was so disappointed in his behavior). After running our daily after school errands we made it back to the house and got settled in.  When things had calmed down a bit, I called Brent aside to fill him in.  We then calmly called Ashagre into his room and told him that we had been informed by his teacher that he hurt a little girl today.  We discussed it - all 3 of us.  He made eye contact and was able to admit that he scratched the little girl because he was mad.  She had told him to go away.  We talked about other things he could have done other than hurting the little girl and made it clear that while getting mad is ok, hurting someone else is never an option.  We kept shaming out of the conversation but let him know that his behavior had disappointed us.  He fully owned the behavior and teared up as the conversation wrapped up.  We never lost our cool and kept the conversation stern but loving.  Then we gave him an opportunity to fix it and moved on.

Daddy tore off a piece of butcher paper the length of our kitchen table.  We told Ashagre that since he had hurt the little girl and made her sad he needed to do something to say he was sorry and make her happy.  He was told to do his best job drawing her a really big picture.  He was expected to work on it for 45 minutes until we had to go to swim lessons.  When we returned he, on his own accord, sat right back down and kept working on it all the way until dinner.  Here's the end result, complete with ladybugs, butterflies, a paint pallet, a worm, and, apparently me, his martian mother:

Daddy helped him spell I'm sorry, but he wrote his name all by himself (something he couldn't do a week ago).  He put his heart into the picture and is proud of it.  I am proud of him for taking responsibility for his actions and being so sincere in his act of apology.