I had the worst day today at my elementary school site in a long time. The kiddos are starting to get antsy as the countdown begins to summer vacation, and some of them are starting to get downright rebellious.
One of the sweetest kids I see there is a little second grade girl. I really like her because she tries very hard to work on her articulation goals and when she sees me in the hallway, she will sometimes come up to me and give me a big hug for no reason.
Today I wanted to throttle her. I had her and Chicken Pox Kid (CPK) and a first grader in a session together. CPK had a line art printout of superheroes folded up in his pocket, and he took it out during the session to show to us. He'd started coloring one of the superheroes at home, and the girl didn't like that he'd colored one of the male superheroes' suits pink. At the end of the session, as I was attending to the first grader, the girl took the picture and tore it in half. At that moment, CPK looked like a deer in headlights, and the girl started cracking up like a hyena. The first grader, who admittedly never knows what the heck is going on and often simply imitates what others in the room do, started laughing along with her. I asked her, "Why did you do that? That was so incredibly rude," and she replied, "He gave it to me." Then she crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it into the trash can. CPK still looked shell-shocked and I told the girl again, "That was so rude and unacceptable. You owe CPK an apology." CPK then burst into tears, but the girl and the first grader continued laughing and laughing.
In the end, I didn't yell, but I told both the first grader and the girl that I was very disappointed in them and that I could not believe how mean they were. The girl finally did apologize, albeit very insincerely, but CPK was completely inconsolable. I finally had to send the other two out of the room, then had a little talk with CPK, who told me he wanted to go home. Lucky for him (and, let's be honest, for ME), it was five minutes until the end of school, so I walked him back up to his room and explained what had happened to his teacher. I also went back to the girl's classroom, and had another little chat with her about what a mean person she had been and told her that I never EVER want to see something like that happen again. She listened to me and said, "OK," but all the while still had a little smile on her face.
Can someone please explain to me why and how kids can be so mean to each other?
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