Oh Really...

Since Aaron has started preschool, I think of him very often when he is not home and I try to imagine what his day is like. Is he having fun? Is he working hard? Is he behaving himself? When he comes home, he offers very little information no matter how hard I pry, despite all of my most serious attempts to drag even a small piece of dirt out of him. Sometimes though, you can learn a whole lot just by observing and today I learned an interesting little tid bit that he so interestingly managed to leave out.


In his class, the teacher uses a behavior system in which there is a classroom tree and everyone has a monkey in the tree. If you misbehave, your money comes out of the tree, and you don't get to "feed" him a banana sticker at the end of the day. Each week, if the students have behaved themselves, they should have four stickers and then they get to pick a prize out of the treasure chest. So far, Aaron has always had all four stickers at the end of the week, but last week when I went to pick him up on Wednesday, he seemed off. When I saw him he looked upset about something, but when I asked him about it he said that he was fine. The next day was the day of his Halloween party and while I was helping the other homeroom mom set up, I noticed that Aaron didn't have a sticker for Wednesday. I didn't think much of it because since he leaves early, I thought that maybe the teacher had just forgotten to give it to him before he left.


Fast forward to this morning...


The teacher was having all of the kids line up to "feed" their monkeys because they had forgotten to do that since the party was so crazy. So Aaron got his banana sticker and hung it up and the teacher didn't say anything about the fact that he only had three out of four stickers. When he walked away I said, "Did he get his monkey taken out of the tree?" She said, "Yeah, he was running in the classroom with another boy." Well now it all makes sense. I thought that it was really funny because it wasn't like he was beating up another kid or anything, he was just running which is SO Aaron, but I found it interesting that he didn't tell me about it. I would think that that would be something that would stand out from the goings on of the day or perhaps it stood out so much that that is why he seemed upset when I got him on Wednesday and he was too embarrassed to tell me.


When he came home, I asked him if he had his monkey taken out of the tree last week and he got this grin on his face that screamed BUSTED! He said that he did and when I asked what happened he very matter of factly said, "I was running." Just like that, "I was running." I just laughed and said, "Well, let's try to get all four stickers this week ok." I didn't want him to think that he couldn't tell me when these things happen for fear of getting in trouble again at home because I think that having the monkey taken out of the tree is all the punishment that a running offense requires. Now if he had gone all Ralphie on some Scott Farkas type, then I might have to discuss the matter a little more in depth, but if running is his only offense, I think he is doing pretty well.