Surviving

It looks like we made it. The first day of first grade is in the books, and just like last year I sent children to school and got mobsters in return. Ask them what they learned that day and they’ll tell you nothing or that it is none of your business or they forget. “Learned? Who says I learned?” Even small things like questions about what they had for lunch are met with stone walls.

It is still fun to watch them grow, but they also came home tired and in bad modes. Since we had failed to get together with one of their friends before school started we did so yesterday and they kids had the energy that only tired children can have. It was probably a mistake to have three adults and five kids but there we were and ours were bouncing off the walls.

One of the problems that has developed is kids are starting to discover hierarchy and jockeying for position and our boys have found themselves targets of this in some regard. The thing of it is they’re in the first grade now and many of their friends are still in kindergarten. That is the trump card they don’t know they hold when this social jockeying starts to happen. Throwing that in someone’s face is probably better than my suggestion of punch them.

I was also a person that was a target of this type of social jockeying when I was a kid and it did lead to broken kneecaps and other maladies for kids that picked on the wrong person. The general philosophy of punch them in the face worked well for me, but it did cause a couple trips to the principles office, but it stopped the bigger problem in its tracks. When someone knows they won’t be walking for a week because they choose the wrong stepping stone they choose more wisely the next time.

Though I will say having the attitude of a bulldozer isn’t all that helpful as an adult. It would have been better if I had been more diplomatic back then and learned to work those problems out, but as Kenny Rogers once said, “Sometimes you’ve got to fight to be a man.”