I'm gonna tell!

As we were lining up to come in after playing outside on Tuesday, Molly* nearly ran into Ariana*. Molly had her back turned, and was moving sort of fast. Backwards. Ariana put her hands out toward Molly, and they connected.

Molly furiously turned around, shook her finger in Ariana's face and said, "Don't you DARE push me around!!"

Ariana, who is a very sweet little girl, always conciliatory and kind and peaceful meekly said, "I'm sorry, Molly."

I intervened.

"No." I said, firmly. "Don't apologize, Ariana, you did nothing wrong. Molly, she didn't push you. She put her hands up to avoid you crashing into her."

Molly held up her finger at my face and shook it (oh no you di'int...) and said to me loudly, "You don't even know what happened, you weren't even watching!"

The other kids were shocked at her disrespectful tone and attitude and gaped at her. Then she shouted at everyone, "Stop staring at me! I hate you!!"

She stormed off to the playground bench that's near where we line up. All the other kids were shocked and unsure of what to do. I said, "Okay guys, let's go," and started walking toward the building. Three or four of the kids said something about Molly. "She's not with us! She's still sitting there!"

"I know," I told them. "She'll come join us in a moment." I kept walking.

We went to the building, I held the door open for the kids, and they went in to wash their hands. Molly sat defiantly on the bench. I went inside and allowed the big, heavy door to slam shut. I was observing Molly through the window the whole time, and she wasn't far away. When she heard the door shut, she jumped up and started running toward the doors as fast as she could, thinking we'd left her outside.

As she approached the door, I held it open for her.

"You LEFT me!!" she accused. "You're going to be in so much trouble!!" I ignored her and told a couple kids they could have beanbags for reading time and agreed to fill a couple requests from some other ones for some of the special books I keep in the back room. They don't fit on the book cart and I don't want them getting trashed by someone trying to cram them in, instead.

As we walked back across the breezeway to the cafeteria, Ariana tried again to apologize for something she hadn't even done, and Molly yelled at her again. "Just leave me alone! I don't like you!" And then she said it. The phrase guaranteed to make girls and boys in the elementary set cry... or at least really hurt their feelings. "You're not my friend anymore!"

Ariana's eyes filled with tears and Molly, thinking she had triumphed, shoved past her into the cafeteria. I went after her and said, "After we get started reading, you're going to need to come sit down with me and talk, Molly."

After everyone was situated and I'd set the timer for 20 minutes, I sat down with her. She was determined to take control.

"I'm going to tell my mom everything you did to me today," she said defiantly. "You'll see."

"That's fine, Hon. You do that. I'll help you with it."

Then we had a conversation about what had happened to start the whole mess, and I once again explained that Ariana had not run into her on purpose, and that she'd overreacted and turned a minor incident into a ridiculous show for everyone.

And that we would definitely be talking to Mom, because being disrespectful to the other kids and to me "Is not okay, Molly. Do we talk to you like that?"

She tried to bluster. "Well Ariana was mean to me a couple days ago on the playground, it was my turn on the slide and she went ahead of me! She took my turn!!"

"Molly, we've talked about this before. If something happens during school, it's not supposed to come to our program with you. And if something happens here, we don't take it to school with us. Once the problem is over, we leave it behind and go on with our lives."

I brought up an example that had happened between two other kids earlier this year in my program and turned into something ugly that happened during school recess. "They ended up in the principal's office, Molly. Do you remember that? And the principal told their mom and dad, too. And since then, we haven't had something like that going on. You really want to think about what's coming out of your mouth and your attitude with the other kids. We are all each other's friend here, and we try to take care of each other."

She was less defiant, but I knew that if I did not talk to her mom, there would be some crazy story from Molly and I'd end up with a much larger situation to handle afterward.

Thank you, Blogger, for eating the last part of my post just before bedtime when I'm too friggin' tired to try to remember what I said and how I said it.

Talked to Molly's mom. Got it figured out.

My job is never boring.