Just this year AJ has begun to complain that he felt sick and needed to stay home from school. This is likely a reflection on the more difficult third grade, a hard-ass teacher and some good problem solving on his part!
I have gotten 2 mails from school that AJ was "caught" eating erasers. Of course he has been an oral-sensory-seeking type of guy for a long time. So it doesn't impress me much. Oh, and you can forget about germs. Between my kid and others in the quirky tribe, they have ingested things that would make most loose their lunch just at the mention of it. If these kids haven't gotten seriously ill yet from drinking toilet water, licking the ground, eating gum stuck under public tables, then it is not going to happen. Though informal, my longitudinal, multi-subject study to proves it.
Monday's not home from AJ's aide said,
"Today Alex said he ate an eraser. Later he said his stomach hurt and he wanted to go to the nurse. We stayed there awhile and then came back to class. Later he told me he had tricked me and he thought it was funny."
Well, if you aren't aware, lying takes a certain cognitive ability, or problem solving skill to do. So after I got over snickering to myself, I asked AJ,
"What were you doing when you asked to go to the nurse?"
"Writing a thank you letter to XYZ store." (They had gone there on a field trip)
Ah, a perfect time to fake illness, as he has difficulty with writing, and hence, hates it.
So later Pops and I sat down with him and asked him how thought Tim (his aide) felt when AJ lied to him. He said "sad". we encouraged him to ask about taking a break but that it wasn't okay to lie. We then told him he would have to write a letter to Tim apologizing.
"AJ, what do you think you should say in the letter?"
"That I am sorry I fake sicked Tim?"
Well, that was a good start. We helped him clean up his grammar.
Later, when he was sleeping, we patted him on the back for using some great thinking skills.
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Liz from I Speak of Dreams that is.
ReplyDeleteI've been reading more about theory of mind (ToM) in my two undergrad. psych courses.
According to ToM, the concept of lying, funny as funny, and being able to come up with "sad" about being lied to are all not in the skill set.
HA I say.
But the chief ToM theorist is a Brit, studying Brit folk. Maybe that's part of the problem.
And why, I ask you, is eating erasers a bad thing? (Germs aside).
I don't know if I laughed harder about AJ being "caught" eating an eraser (actually, at first, I didn't really find any really too out of the norm); or by "eating gum stuck under public tables" (because Moon has done that in the past); or by AJ mastering to lie and you and Pop celebrating.
ReplyDeletebut at the end... Yay for AJ!