What did your kindergarten kid learn at school (or on the bus!) that you wish they hadn’t?

[Stay tuned to the end of this post for an announcement about our giveaway winner! To be entered in the next drawing, just comment on this article, then check out [...]]]> QUESTION OF THE DAY

What did your kindergarten kid learn at school (or on the bus!) that you wish they hadn’t?

[Stay tuned to the end of this post for an announcement about our giveaway winner! To be entered in the next drawing, just comment on this article, then check out the giveaways page to find out how you can get extra entries!]
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It’s tough when your kids go off into the world without you. All those hours you have spent reading them books with morals, feeding them only quality TV, coaching them through playgroups and playdates at awkward ages (“we don’t hit our friends!”)…all of that is about to go out of the window as we entrust our darlings to a bunch of strangers, and worse: the children of utter strangers.

But hey, it’s a school (a Catholic school, in my case). Everyone’s qualified. The other kids won’t be that bad, not to kindergartners, surely? And how much of a bad influence could the other children be anyway, you ask yourself. After all, it’s only elementary school.

O-kay…

Let me take you back in time to last February. That evening I wrote in my journal about my just-turned-six-year-old angel:

So, A came home the other day telling me that a seven year old had been sent to the principal for,

“Doing this,” he says, flipping me the bird (i.e. raising his middle finger).

Now, where I grew up, the middle finger was nothing but an unorthodox way of counting ‘one’, (we have our own, home-grown obscene gestures, thank you very much) but I know enough about American culture to know that this is A Bad Thing. I dutifully expressed disapproval, concern and a little astonishment, before I emphasized that it was rude and disrespectful and that he was never, EVER to do it.

[CUT TO TODAY]

The bus arrives. The bus driver holds her arm out so the kids can’t get off, and beckons me over.

Imagine my pride when when she told me that, in amongst a lot of other un-busworthy behaviour, my darling six-year-old had been gaily flipping his middle finger around at all and sundry.

His response?

“I was doing it behind my back!”

Because, you know, that helps.

His admission of guilt was quickly followed by a desperate, “Don’t tell Da-a-ad!”

Not with a straight face, I won’t.

…

We have had a chat.
There will be no shopping trips this weekend.
(Or maybe ever.)
And he’s writing a letter of apology to the bus driver.

And so it begins…

And I know this truly is only the beginning. I’m going to look back on this in years to come and wonder why I got so embarrassed and horrified by this little semi-innocent transgression. I don’t like this knowledge, but let’s be realistic, shall we?

Still, at least I know I can definitely blame other people’s children for this one.

That’s some comfort

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AND NOW, to the giveaway winner!!!

The winner of the fabulous, awesome 3-D chalk set is……. ONNA from TODDLERCRAFT.NET !!! Congrats ONNA, I’ll be contacting you by email to get your mailing address. I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun with this chalk set this summer.

To be entered in the drawings, just comment here and check out the giveaways page to see how to score extra entries.

I’m particularly pleased that Onna won because, apart from being an early supporter here, she runs a wonderful website (http://toddlercraft.net) that is full of simple crafty ideas for, you guessed it, doing with your toddler.

Next week’s give away is a set of phonics reader books. These have been a wonderful tool to help me teach my early-reader boys to read (the four year old is sounding out letters and words now, so I’ve been breaking them out again). Scooby-Doo is a big hit in our house, so I’ve chosen this set for next weeks’ prize:

Comment, comment, comment, blog about this, link, tweet, retweet…and win! Good luck!