On Middle School

Tuesday I went off to MOPS with nary a care in the world. (Well, maybe not nary a care - I'm a little stressed right now...so perhaps we'll say I was unsuspecting.) And I found myself seemingly transported back to middle school.

I mentioned some of the trouble the kiddo's been having, and so my solution (that appears to be working quite nicely) is to just focus on keeping him rather calm before any events where he has to go to overcrowded child care rooms and remind him as I drop him off to be calm, kind, and gentle. We also have a sticker chart that is a path leading us to an evening in hell at Chuck E Cheese. Good behavior gets stickers. (Ring that bell, Pavlov, ring that bell!)

So, the morning was going swimmingly. He was calm. We were having fun. As we went in, one of the mentor moms says hi, and I said hi. She addressed the kiddo by name and he just ignored her. (He's 3.) I asked if he was going to say hi and he shook his head. She said (with a tone of great portents of doom), "Oh, are you having a bad day?" The implication being clear that the child care workers ought to run and hide right now. I smiled and said that no, we had been having a lovely day so far.

We went on our merry way into the main room and, in an effort to keep him calm, I told the kiddo that no, he could not go and play with one of the older boys who was early because the two of them inevitably wind each other up. The other boy's mom, who I thought was a friend, looked at me and said "It's going to be ok." And I smiled, nodded, and just continued to hold the doodle's hand. He didn't fight it but he did ask again and the other mom glared like I should let him go, so I explained to her that I was just trying to keep him calm and that I knew he fed off her son's energy and would get wound up.

And then she proceeded to get very ugly in a manner reminiscent of middle school.

So I collected my things and we left. So we're finished with MOPS, and frankly, it's kind of a relief. It's always annoyed me somewhat, but I just don't get women. I keep trying to find a group of them to hang out with, and inevitably this happens. I figure it's got to be me, because I really don't think 99% of the world is the part with the problem, but I can't for the life of me figure out what the problem is. On the other hand, life is too short to spend too much time worrying about it.