This Boy of Mine

Oh, where do I begin?

If my husband were writing this, he'd probably begin with last night's events since he was there. Apparently, when he went to pick up Judah from his class at The Anchor, one of the girls in Judah's class was crying because of Judah's retaliating drawing and remark. James brought it up this morning because he wanted me to somehow communicate with Judah about the situation.

Judah said that Sophia drew a picture of a girl pushing down boys, so he drew a picture of himself pushing down Sophia--and then he told her about it--which, of course, made her cry. Even after his teacher talked to him about it, he still didn't understand why what he did "wasn't appropriate" (his words). So I turned it around:

"What if you had drawn a picture of boys pushing down girls and then Sophia drew a picture of herself pushing you down? How would you feel?"

"Sad."

"That's why it's not appropriate. If you do something to someone else that would make you feel bad if they did it to you, then it's not appropriate. We treat people the way we want to be treated--not the way they treat us. How did Sophia respond to your drawing?"

"She didn't see it."

"How did she know about it?"

"I told her."

"And how did she respond?"

"I don't know."

"Did she laugh?"

"No."

"Did she smile?"

"No."

"Did she cry?"

"A little."

"So how do you think she felt?"

"Sad."

"Oh. So her response to your drawing was crying because it made her sad. How would you feel about writing her a letter?"

"Good . . . Where's the paper?"

I found an empty card and a pen and thought I was going to write it for him, but he sat down with it and asked me how to spell the following:

I AM SORRY FOR DRAWING A PICTURE OF PUNCHING YOU. JUDAH. I (heart symbol) SOPHIA. FROM JUDAH.

Then, as Daddy's suggested, he drew a picture of himself with Sophia fighting a monster together with swords to show that they're on the same team.

I'm not sure why this impacted me to the degree that I wanted to take the time to sit down and write it out, except that Judah hasn't been interested in writing until now, and it really surprised me that he wanted to write the card himself. A few weeks ago he wrote out a poem that he memorized, but he did it on the dry erase board and instead of James telling him each letter, he wrote it on the board and Judah copied it. This is the first time he has written this much on his own.

I also feel like he processed the situation well. I could tell that at first he was defensive, but by the time we got to writing the letter, his heart had softened and he was truly sorry for what he did. His face gives him away every time--he's so expressive.

This weekend, I think I apologized at least twice a day for my short temper. I rarely feel as if I do things "right," but I feel like we handled this one pretty well, and I wanted a reminder.

A huge thanks to the writings of Dr. Raymond Moore (School Can Wait and Homestyle Teaching books) and the teachings of Danny Silk (Loving Our Kids on Purpose CDs)--you have both saved me a ton of stress and grief.