Our Little Scrapper

So, um, remember this entry when I wondered about Cooper not being comfortable asserting himself and hoping that he’s not ever going to be scared to stand up for himself?  Well, let’s just say that I was a tad off base.  Or else things have changed dramatically in a month.

This morning I went to pick the boy up from his summer school class.    The past two weeks have been his “Pirate Class” where they made treasure chests and used maps to find their treasure, they did tons of cool pirate-related art projects, and the class culminated yesterday with a visit from a juggling pirate that Cooper could not stop talking about!  Today was the last day and since this was his first time in a school setting, I was relieved that the first two weeks went so fantastically.   When I arrived to get him, they were playing out on the playground, so I called out to him to let him know I was there, when his teacher Ms. Becca approached me and tugged my sweatshirt sleeve.  With a serious “teacher” look about her, she leaned in and said “I need to talk to you.”  Now, I’ve always hated that phrase.  That phrase is never good!  My stomach dropped.

Ms. Becca pulled me to the side and said that there’d been an altercation with Cooper.  I was thinking that my concerns from June had come true and someone had done something mean to him or something.   Nope.  My sweet “non-assertive” little boy was in trouble for punching some kid and then whaling on him with a rubber dinosaur until the kid bawled.  Oh oh.

She assured me that they had spoken to him about it, but that she wanted me to follow up with him.  Uh…no problem there, Ms. Becca.  Believe me.

I didn’t want to go overboard though, so I held his hand as we walked to the car and asked him how his day had been.  He was wearing pirate beads and carrying his little pirate chest that he had decorated with jewels and he looked so stinkin’ cute it was hard to picture him beating the tar out of some kid with a dino, but that was beside the point.

As we approached the car, I said “did something happen with you and another boy today?” and what does my kid do?  He looks up at me with his eyes all big and shakes his head no, while he says “I didn’t do nothing, mommy!”  Oh boy.  So I’ve got some Dennis the Menace – slash – Eddie Haskell on my hands!?

I said, “whatever happened, you do not, ever, ever hit someone.  Do you understand?”  He then changes his story and says “I didn’t mean to…we were just playing.” 

I said “Not when you make someone cry, Cooper.  That’s not playing.  I don’t want to get a report like that again, okay?”  He nodded and said “Okay, mommy.”  But that wasn’t the end of it.

Not two hours later, when he and I were at home putting laundry away, he got mad at me for telling him which laundry basket to use, at which point he picked up the laundry basket and whipped it against the wall, turns and looks at me with his chin all jutted out and says “I’ll fight you!”  Oh. my. goodness.   Seriously!  What happened to the boy I wrote about in June?!  When I had written “I just don’t ever want him to be scared to assert himself” I didn’t mean this!  Something clearly got screwed up in the cosmos when I uttered those words.  Would this be one of those “be careful what you wish for” scenarios?