Today when Emily got out of school, she told me she’d gotten a green. Green means good behavior on their stoplight system. Nothing was written in her planner, so I took her at her word.
While we were at Starbucks, she told me she’d gotten upset during “Partner Time Around The World Worksheet” which apparently has something to do with clocks and telling time. She added that she was better later. I was very excited to hear her say this, because this is the first time she’s volunteered that she’d had trouble during the day. It’s usually pulling teeth to get details out of her.
Later, I got a note from her teacher saying that she’d had gotten a “class pass” today, meaning she’d had to leave the classroom because she was being disruptive. Since nothing had been written in her planner, I assumed this meant that she had NOT gotten a green, as she said, but had fibbed. Earlier, we had gone by Blockbuster to get a video that she’d been wanting, so I went into the den to talk to her as she was watching it.
“Your teacher tells me you got a class pass. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“But you told me you got a green. You got a green AND a class pass?”
“Yes!”
“If I call Ms. Falls and ask her, what will she tell me?”
“Yes…No.”
“Will she tell me you got a green?”
“No.”
So I told her that I was upset about her not telling me the truth and gave a little lecture, and took her movie out of the DVD player, telling her we weren’t watching it today. She kept saying, “why?” and I ran over it again twice, then went with, “I explained why” and left it at that because she seemed to me to be arguing for arguing’s sake. Then I called her teacher to find out what happened, because it’s really not like Emily to say she got a green when she didn’t. Deception is not her strong suit.
Apparently, after you get a class pass, you start over at green when you go back into the classroom, so that you have a fresh start to try to turn the day around. Emily was telling the truth. She did get a green and a class pass. So when she told me she got a green, and also told me about getting upset but that she got better, THAT was the truth. I misinterpreted the teacher’s e-mail to me. And then probably confused her while grilling her.
Well, crap.
I talked to Emily again, telling her that I’d spoken with her teacher and she said that Emily had gotten a green and a class pass, and that now I understood, and that while I wasn’t happy about her getting upset and having to leave, I was glad that she had told me the truth. And we could watch her movie. Unfortunately, she had no desire to watch the movie – either she felt she had to stick with what I said earlier, or it was tainted. She seems okay with us watching it tomorrow, so hopefully it’ll be okay.
She was fine about 15 minutes after, wanting to play with me like everything was fine. My recovery took a little longer.
Yeah, I feel like a grade A heel.
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