Dear So and So

[Duck on Wheels]

When my "little one" (now 23 y.o., 6'5", and very sweet and laid back) was in his terrible 2's ... and 3's, and 4's ... the day care teacher designed a whole program for dealing with, not only my explosive kid but several others in the same class. She did a year-long program on "feelings". They went to the art museum and looked at paintings to see what emotions the people in them showed. They listened to music and painted emotions as they listened. They read books on emotions -- anger, joy, sadness, etc. After a few months, these little toddlers could understand and express their own feelings better, at which point they stopped "exploding". Much easier to recognize, and talk about, your own feelings when you've used books etc. to learn about others' feelings first.

From there, this teacher went on to a several year program about trees -- which put an end to kids breaking branches off the trees in the park around the day care. The class would "adopt" a different tree each year -- a big pine in the forest one year, a neighborhood birch the next, and so on. They'd visit the tree in each season, and a botanist from the university gave them a toddler-accessible lecture on what the tree could be used for -- like making sweet syrup from birch sap, which they then did, or a trip to the paper plant to see spruce made into paper. Great program!

Then in grade school, when there was a littering problem, the whole faculty decided to do a program on colors and seeing your surroundings. For instance, my son's class spent one lesson on their knees by the windows painting the winter scene outside. learning that snow is not white and spruce trees neither simply green nor black. Not long after, he started taking pictures of sunsets over the fjord and sending them to his big sister (who was away at college) to make her homesick; he'd just stand there awestruck by the windows and say what a beautiful place we lived in, then take a picture to remind his sister of that. And yes, at least for a while, there was a lot less litter around the school.

So yep, time-outs and "serious talks" with 3-year-olds are not the best methods, just the "easiest" and "fastest" for impatient and unimaginative teachers.