Seedlings and Confessions

Today T had a bit of a breakthrough. How consistent this will be, only time will tell. But for now, we had one and I'm holding on to THAT.

We went to pick him up to school today. Now, what you may not know is that I have some serious anxiety issues. The time I have THE MOST anxiety issues is when 3pm rolls around. That is the time when the reality of picking T up from school really sinks in. From the beginning of the year, I became conditioned to have anxiety attacks whenever the teacher gave me the "oh thank God you're here to pick up this satan spawn" look.

Nowadays, the anxiety is still there, but the level of severity of offenses, in general, has gone down. Well, honestly, there's really only the option of improvement when the base-line is throwing furniture at people or biting substitutes on the thigh to the point where they have to get shots. Gradually we have moved on from that to, say, hitting a girl in the face with his lunchbox (I say box because it is, in fact, a hard plastic box), attacking a boy in the bathroom with his belt, and kicking a teacher's aide in the shin, to things like not following a direction, throwing a quiet tantrum at the zoo, and climbing over a fence.

Today T came up to me and told me that Mrs. D had to speak with me. Mind you, up until this point we have been working on honesty with T. He does NOT like to get in trouble because we are not shy about taking away privileges. The problem is, WE ALWAYS FIND OUT. And he KNOWS this. HE KNOWS THIS. Every single friggin day I wait for the magical words: "Thank you for having such a good day today, T." At that point we're all off the hook and can, by extension, relax and have a good afternoon and evening.

Right, but today he said she needed to speak with me. So I asked him "T, why does Mrs. D need to speak with me?"

"I do not know."

"T, there are two options here. You either tell me what happened, and I verify with Mrs. D and we're done, OR you keep telling me that you forgot and I find out from Mrs. D anyway, and you get in MORE trouble than you were for the original problem."

At this point, his friend RJ starts to rat him out. "I think I saw T at lunch yelling at someone."

One second later: "Ok Mom, I touched Z's butt."

"Why did you touch his butt?"

"Because he told on me for swinging my arms."

Now, I admit that at this point I had a moment of weakness and lost it a bit. I got in T's face and asked him why the heck he would be putting his hands on ANYone. But DaddyB put his hand on my shoulder and told me to calm down.

"Ok," I said "let's go talk to Mrs. D and see if there's any more to your story."

On the way over, I reminded him that this was his last chance to fess up to any other "minor" details he may have failed to mention. He denied any other problems, and we came up to Mrs. D.

I think she knew right away that he had told me. I simply stated "was the issue an inappropriate touch situation?"

Mrs. D beamed. "Yes, that was it... T, I am SO proud of you! I am glad you told your mom. That was a very good decision!"

I asked her if he had had his time out, she said yes, and I gave T a huge hug and thanked him and kissed him. I told him that he had served his consequence, and because he was honest, that was the end of it. He had this strange, confused grin with a hint of relief on his face.

On the way to the car, I said "now T, I am very happy that you told me the truth, though I am not happy about what you did. Do you understand the difference?" He said yes, and that was that.

Now. When we got home, we decided (because he came home with a seedling) that we would plant some stuff. We stopped at Target, picked up soil and tomato seedlings, and got home to work. T helped me put soil in some of his Home Depot and Lowe's projects.

Anyway, an upside down tomato planter, three little wooden planters, and a front yard covered in seeds later, we watered and finished up.

If everything goes as planned, we will have seedlings in the next few weeks.