Proud Mommy

Matthew was upstairs crying tonight.  Mom moment of the year:  It went on for about 20 minutes before I realized he was crying rather than singing, oops!  Apparently he had a horrible, no good, very bad day today at school.  I got a note that there was an altercation on the bus this morning and that Matthew had lost his recess because of it.  Matthew claims that as they were getting off the bus another kid punched him "for no reason at all" and he punched him back.  I'm sure there was a reason, although it wouldn't surprise me that Matthew didn't know the reason.  He doesn't pick up on social cues very well.  I figured this was the reason he was crying, so I went up to talk to him.

Matthew told me that he had brought his Pokémon cards to school today and his teacher had confiscated them.  I absolutely LOVE his teacher!!  The kids are not supposed to bring the cards to school, we have discussed this numerous times and he continues to try and sneak them to school.  I usually catch him.  Im so glad the teacher caught him because if he gets away with things like this his behavior quickly spirals downhill.  I cant say enough good things about his school.

Anyway, the most amazing thing about all of this was that Matthew was crying.  He wasn't turning this incident into anger and rage.  He didn't blame it on anyone or anything.  He allowed himself to be sad and disappointed without the whole "flight or fight" response I usually see.  We discussed how taking the cards was a bad choice, but that he knew what could happen if he did it and he still made the choice.  We discussed how it is okay to be sad and the important thing is to take this incident and learn from it so we don't make the same mistake again.  He was able to articulate that bringing the cards to school to show his friends was NOT worth the consequence and that next time he needs to think it through first.  He then said that the rule is that they loose the cards till the end of the year but that the teacher has given another student back toys the next day.  We were able to discuss and role play how he could talk to the teacher about this tomorrow.  He needs to be respectful and ask if he can discuss the situation with the teacher and see if there is anything he can do to repair his mistake so he can get the cards back.  We also discussed that it was up to the teacher and if she said no, then he needed to take the consequences with dignity.

Overall, despite thinking he was singing in his room for 20 minutes, I am so proud of our evening and how far we have come.