On Sunday, one of the kids, we'll call him {T}, needed to go to the bathroom. He had been misbehaving for an hour already, being a total pill. Running through the halls, hitting other kids with a folder, taking things out of my bag and playing with them without asking...you get the picture. Not what I would expect from a 5 year old.
I take him to the men's room and stand outside waiting for him. He is a big boy and can take care of himself. The door that I was standing outside of has a window. The window is bubble paned so I can't "see" anything but I can see what is going on inside when {T} isn't at a urinal or in a stall.
After a couple minutes {T} comes back into view. And he is running up and down in front of the stalls and climbing onto the sink. At first, I thought that he might be looking for something or trying to figure something out but after a couple more minutes, I become convinced that he isn't really doing anything. So I crack open the door and yell, "{T}, I can see you through the window. Stop it and come out."
A man walks past me into the bathroom and says, "I'll get him."
I hear {T}, "I need a paper towel. I can't reach."
The man gets the paper towel and leads {T} to the door.
As I'm walking him back to class, this group of mild age men that have been standing near by start laughing and one says in a high voice, "I can see you through the window!" And another says, "Wait till someone is screaming at your kid."
And a man who my husband and I had talked to about our hopeful adoption (He and his wife have adopted 4 kids of their own) said, "Doesn't that make you glad you don't have any?"
No. It doesn't make me glad. Not glad at all.
Nothing can possibly make us glad we don't have kids. When we have put years of hope and effort into something that comes a little too easily for some, we only cling to thoughts of someday getting our baby one way or another.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear you have had to deal with misbehaving children and misbehaving adults recently. Some never learn. I hope your week gets better.
P.S. I am a bit of a control freak too. We know how we want things done and we know the quickest, best way to do them! And we lack a little bit of patience sometimes. :O
Wow, those guys were really nice and super sensitive. Not. Lamers.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you went through that. I don't know if this would work for your class, but when we taught the 5-year-olds, we would all take a break about halfway through class and go to the bathroom and get a drink. That way James could go with the boys and I could go with the girls. It's kind-of awkward because they want to go to the bathroom by themselves and they know that they don't want to go into the bathroom of the opposite sex, but they're not quite... coordinated enough to do it completely on their own.
Ah...people...HUGS to you!!! They always seem to know all the wrong things to say for some reason...
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