Vacation hangover

Our preschool director called me this morning, saying my youngest was having a very hard day and was currently having an office visit.

“I think he has vacation hangover.” He’d had a rough day yesterday, too. The note that came home said, “During lesson he got mad and decided to scribble o his paper and make a paper airplane…he threw his cup and the crayons went everywhere…” Ultimately he had two office visits and a bunch of broken crayons.

Today, the director told me, “He’s taking off his shoes and socks.”

“Oh, he’s doing the ‘I’ll-show-you! I’m-gonna-get-naked” routine?”

We both giggled. The director has two sons of her own.

I couldn’t imagine what had happened. I was sure he was going to start off his day on a better note. I had talked to him about how he might apologize to Ms. So-and-so and how the conversation could go: “I’m sorry for my behavior yesterday” or “I’m sorry for how I acted.” He informed me that he thought “I’m sorry” would do it.

I told him, “I’m sure she’ll forgive you.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one thing, she’s Christian.” And for another, she isn’t going to take your tantrum personally, I thought.

“Oh. Right.” And all Christians are nice and all not-Christians are not-nice.”

“No, no, no, honey. Being Christian doesn’t necessarily mean being nice. It just means following Christ. We try to be nice but no one is perfect. And, there are also a lot of not-Christians who are perfectly nice.”

I continued, “I just mean that you know she knows the Lord’s Prayer: ‘forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.’ ”

“Oh. Right.”

So, I couldn’t imagine where things could have taken a turn for the worse. It was only 10:30 when the director called me.

“Can I talk to him?”

She handed him the phone.

“Hi, honey,” I said.

He began to sob.

“Are you having a hard day?”

“Yeah-ah-ah,” he wailed.

“What happened? You started off great today…”

More sobbing.

“Honey, you can start your day over any time. Just start over.”

The sobbing continued.

“I love you. Ms. So-and-so loves you. God loves you. No matter what.”

The director got back on the phone, “I feel so bad for him.”

“Yeah, me, too. But I am not coming to get him.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t recommend it!”

“Giving in to that manipulation would set a bad precedent. Can you just let him have his lovey?” I asked. He usually only has it at nap time. “And please let him know I’ll be in a little early today. 5:00ish. We have baseball.”

When I arrived at the school that evening, it was closer to 5:30 since baseball had been postponed because of the rain. And when I walked into the classroom, my son was sitting on the floor defiantly with his shoes off.

“Uh oh…” I said.

He saw me and burst into tears. Apparently he was refusing to clean up a bin of plastic dinosaurs he had dumped out. He ran towards me and I lifted him into my arms. “I never have a good day at school,” he despaired.

I sat down in one of the pint-sized chairs next to the table where all the dinosaurs were strewn, and held him and rocked him, wordlessly.

After a few minutes, “Let’s go get lovey and he can help you clean up the dinosaurs.”

“Okay, Mom.”