I'm melllltingggg!!

Poor Jennifer* had a tough day on Thursday.

Know how I knew it? I could hear her sobbing all the way up the damn hallway on her way to me. I looked up toward the gym doors and saw one of the educational assistants listening to her and ineffectually patting her arm and trying to listen to her while the kids were milling all around, heading for buses and pickup and my program.

It wasn't very successful, as she was still red faced and crying when she reached the cafeteria.

I am not insensitive, but I knew that it was a regulation meltdown, meaning her feelings were hurt and that she could wait a few moments for my attention.

The other kids are much nicer than I am, though. They were coming to me one at a time or two at a time to tell me, "Jennifer's crying!!"

She still was, too. With as much volume as she could. Hands over her face, peeking between her fingers to see if I'd noticed.

I told them all (loudly), "She's okay, when she's ready to come tell me what's wrong I'm sure she will." and went back to making sure all the kids were there. That has to be my number one priority unless someone is injured. An injury would take precedence. I am able to figure that out. :)

So she ran down a little. Put her backpack in a basket and went to find something to do. It wasn't long after I made the daily phone call to the front desk ("All the weasels are here, we're clear.") before she came over to talk with me. Her little face started to cloud up and she was manufacturing tears as she made her way across the room, crabbiness in her wake. Giving mean looks to the other kids is a good hint with her that she's wearing her crabby pants.

She sat at my table. Started to tell me how 'everyone is being mean to her'. Evidently she and Ariana had passed in the hallway and Ariana's backpack touched Jennifer's arm. She took that as a mortal insult, (it really really hurrrrrtssss!) and was quite angry with Ariana, who was standing meekly next to me, doing what she does, trying to smooth things over and being mystified over what she'd done that was so bad. I don't know why the two of them don't get along well, but Jennifer is just meaner than hell to her, and Ariana is just... sweet. And mystified. And when Jennifer is snotty, she tries to placate her and is willing to make huge concessions when she really doesn't need to. 99% of any difficulties they have, at least when they're with me, come from Jennifer's meanness.

So I told Jennifer (again, for the 49th time) that we can't bring our anger over things that don't happen in our program with us. That if everyone who was upset during the school day did that, we'd end up with a bunch of people being angry over the past and never having the chance to play together and have fun in our little group. And reminded her that it works the other way, too, that if someone is upset during our program we try to resolve it so that anger doesn't go to school with them.

She agreed, but I knew it wasn't over. Sure enough, 30 seconds later she was explaining to Hannah* how Ariana had been so mean to her by 'trying to knock her over with her backpack' in the hallway.

I stopped the conversation, reminding her that it did not happen in our program, that Ariana did not mean to do anything to hurt her OR her feelings, and that the incident was officially closed. My tone was a little more stern. She looked at me, figured out that I was serious, and didn't cry.

I gave all the kids big sheets of paper to draw on. They've been kicking around in my back room FOREVER and I got tired of moving them and trying to keep them from getting bent, so I put them out for all the kids to use.

They were very large, so there wasn't room at the art table for everyone's project. Some of the kids ended up working on the floor (which our custodian keeps very clean.)

Jennifer walked over to the art table, picked up the entire bin full of markers and took it to the little floor space she'd staked out, ignoring the insulted comments from the other kids.

Alyssa, who I swear monitors things as closely as I do, went over to Jennifer and just grabbed a triple handful of markers from the box and took them to the art table for the other kids. You know... sharing.

Which caused another big Jennifer meltdown. LOUD sobs and tears and anger.

Obviously the kid had a tough day at school and was letting me know about it.

So while Alyssa was getting things out for our snack and the other kids went back to decorating their papers, I invited Jennifer outside to talk to me.

We stepped out on the back porch and I closed the door into the cafeteria. There is a big window so I could see everyone inside. Of course Jennifer and I were visible to the people in the room. I'm always very conscious of things like that.

We had a talk. I told her that I could tell she'd had a hard day and asked her if she'd like to talk about it.

So she told me how mean everyone was to her all day long and how much 'no one likes me', and how 'everyone isn't fair'.

I let her run down a bit, just listening and nodding my head.

We talked about how it didn't make sense for her to have ALL the markers, and that it wasn't really fair to the other kids for her to have taken the bin, and that them yelling at her about it wasn't them being unfair, it was her being unreasonable. I didn't tell her those things, I made her tell them to me by asking questions around the edges and guiding the conversation a bit. But she got to tell me about her whole day, every little slight, real or imagined, and how she really felt about all of it.

We were outside for about 10 minutes. It was a good choice for her, it was quiet out there, there was a little breeze and some bird song... and no kid noise. It's the last week of school and they're pretty wired and pretty loud. She was just completely overwhelmed with the continued interruption of her routine (since school is almost out there are constant parties, events, and no structure) and the noise in our program, the crowd in the hall after school, the fact that her class spent a great deal of the day outdoors and her natural inclination to drama.

She was exhausted and crabby and needed someone to listen.

It's sometimes not easy to have her in my program, she does require some maintenance now and then, but I am glad I'm there for her.

She was much calmer, felt better, and most importantly finished the day without getting mad at anyone else. I'd like to report that she didn't cry anymore, but she tripped over a beanbag chair she was trying to bring across the room and because she was on edge, had another little meltdown over it.

But she stopped being crabby with everyone, and the afternoon was much more pleasant because of it.