Crime and Punishment

"Mom, you would not believe what happened to me today."

Okay, Ella. What happened?

"Mom, today I went down a level in behavior just for having to go to the bathroom.  The bathroom! That means I could get a bad report card just for having to pee!"

In Ella's classroom, each student has a thermometer, with six gradations.  They start at green at the beginning of each week, and every infraction takes them down a level until violet-red, at which point, yes, they get marked down on their report cards.  I explained to her that teachers don't like to to have their classes disturbed, and hers wants her to learn to use the bathroom during recess.


"I will from now on. I didn't know it was a rule, though. She told me I should wait or else go down a level, but I was going to explode! I decided it was better to go down a level than to wet my pants."

Hm. Yes, I can support that decision...

"Okay, mom, so these are the things I've gotten in trouble for this week. Forgetting to change my shoes..."

Oh, Ella, are you still forgetting to change them?

"You know me. I try really hard to remember, but I'm usually singing to myself when I get to school, and somehow I just...forget.  I also got in trouble for holding a paintbrush wrong!"

What? You went down a behavior level for not holding your paintbrush right?

"No, I didn't go down a level, but my teacher got really, really grumpy with me.  She also got grumpy with me for not holding my pencil right when I was erasing. Erasing! And I also got in trouble with Heir Fredrick for saying 'ist' instead of 'sind.' That gets him really upset.  But I don't go down a level for that, either."

Heir Fredrick is Ella's language instructor. Is he nice, I asked her.

"Oh man! He's really nice! He just really thinks it's important that I say the right words.  Today I told him the only thing I needed to learn was 'Give me back my shoe!' because some boys stole my shoe while we were playing tag, but he told me, no, I still have to learn the whole language.  I also got in trouble for eating in class."

What?!  Come on, Ella, surely you know that's not allowed!  It's not even allowed in your school in America!

"Yeah, well, I wasn't sure if it was allowed or not. No one ever told me the rules, and I so always have to guess. I figured there was a chance it was okay, so I tried it, because I was so hungry.  But it didn't work out."

My daughter speaks in italics a lot.

Helping carry home patio furniture tonight:
she's a strong girl in so many ways

She also is hovering dangerously close to the lower half of her thermometer this week.  Kids are always welcome to do make-up essays, called a "Joker," to bring themselves up to a higher level: a half a page, written, for each level. Ella tried doing one once, because she was so mortified the first time she was docked a level.  But the teacher told her any writing she did for make-up had to be in German, and told her she could copy a half a page out of textbook.  That was excruciating for Ella and me both, taking over an hour when you factored in the all complaining.  So she's decided to just not get in trouble any more.

Which seems to be a bit at odds with her trial-and-error method of determining whether eating's allowed...but, so be it. She really does want desperately to please her teachers, and I think, slowly, one shoe at a time, she's figuring it out.