School Update

Last week I posted an entry about the kids' school experience. I wanted to take a few moments to provide a brief update.

Lillian and Aiden have each experienced ups and downs in regards to their new school. One day after Lillian triumphantly walked through the doors of the Cottage-gasse school she was crying about how hard everything was. She felt that her teacher yelled at her during one lesson, and she was struggling to understand other kids. But she quickly rebounded and seems to have settled back in. I tried to counsel her by saying that since she didn't know what the teacher was saying she really couldn't know if the teacher was upset with her. Indeed, nonverbal expressions can vary quite dramatically across cultures and without a verbal context can be difficult to decipher. My advice to Lillian was to perform a "validity anger test." I said that the next time she felt her teacher was yelling at her she should casually close all of her fingers into a fist, turn the back of her hand toward the teacher, and then slowly raise her middle finger. If her teacher understood this symbol then Lillian would get to see what the teacher really looked like when she was angry. OK, I didn't tell her that but you must admit that it would be a really cool cross cultural experiment.

Aiden has also rebounded after a couple of days of near meltdowns. On one particular morning he refused to get his shoes on. He staunchly declared he was not going to school. He didn't like school and was not going back and that was all there was to it. I tried to the best of my capacity to issue gentle fatherly advice about how things would get better, how Joseph was courageous when sold into slavery, yada yada. That got me absolutely nowhere so I decided to play hardball. "Aiden!" I intoned. "If you don't get your shoes on right now and go to school then you will have no iPod for the rest of our trip." The "p" on "trip" had barely formed on my lips when he shouted, "NO! NOT THE iPOD!" (my students said my impersonation of this sounded like the gingerbread boy in the Shrek movie who yelled, "No, not the gum drop buttons" or something like that). I felt bad that I had to hit him below the belt, but he went to school and came home in a fine mood. His biggest concern at present is that a bunch of girls tease him by making kissing noises and saying, "marry, marry." I told him that the girls think he's cute and they are flirting with him. I advised him that he should not allow them to isolate him in a deserted area of the school grounds since girls have cooties. But (I said) if they are the daughters of any of the ambassadors that live in the neighborhood he should gladly accept and invitation for his family to join her family for dinner.

Lillian gets to go skating tomorrow with her class. I'm sure she will post on that later. Until next time . . . hugs and kisses.