Simple Pleasures

Job satisfaction is tough to attain. It always feels like other people aren't satisfied with the job I've done.

I made two kids cry over a span of three days last week.

The first kid cried because I got stern with him. This is a kid that I think most people would consider a bully. He is in second grade, but kind of big (portly) for his age. He has difficulties with the English language, so he lags behind his peers significantly. I don't know if he tries to compensate for his scholastic difficulties by intimidating other kids, but I constantly get complaints about his behavior.

Other kids tell me (and I see him do this) that the portly kid stole their ball. Or they will tell me he called them a mean name, or that he kicked their ball away while they were playing with it, or that he pushed someone. The list goes on. I have scolded him numerous times and lectured him about getting along with others. (LOL, can you picture ME lecturing a child on behavioral issues?!)

There have been occasions where I have lectured this kid and benched him, and then less than five minutes after he gets off the bench, I catch him doing the exact thing I benched him for in the first place. It's like this kid's skull is just too thick and he doesn't understand how to respect authority or his peers.

Well, this one day last week, he pushed me too far. I was leading a group activity of steal the bacon, and he pushed someone off the bench while I was about to pick teams. I must've been in a bad mood that day because I just chose to bench him for the duration of the activity.

During the game of steal the bacon, I had another controversy with another boy - he had found a ball and wanted to play with it during the game, and I asked him to give me the ball so no one would be distracted. He got upset and started to run away. As he began to run from me, the portly boy on the bench screamed, "Run away! Keep running!" And of course the kid ran away from me.

He ended up hiding behind the bungalow, which really annoyed me because I had to stop the game and I wasn't able to supervise the rest of the kids out there. (I was the only adult in the yard at the time.) That's just not cool, man. It's potentially dangerous and just a situation you want to avoid - not being able to have anyone supervise the kids.

I ended up defusing that situation fairly quickly, but I was super annoyed by the portly kid, whom I discovered had run off in the confusion to another part of the yard. That pissed me off even more. And of course, little kids have short attention spans, so the fact that I was gone from Steal the Bacon for 3 minutes killed the game entirely. I just let them have free play and do whatever they wanted.

Except for the portly kid.

I told him to go back inside to the cafeteria (that's where we run the program and do homework and stuff) and sit out the entire recess. I saw him go towards the school building... But he tried to hide in the stairway. (Portly kids have pathetic ninja stealth abilities.)

I can't have kids running around unsupervised in the building. I yelled at him to come back to me and just started chewing him out. I don't really remember what I said exactly. Just that he was doing something stupid and dangerous and disrespectful. I did my best to give him my Batman voice, too. I was laying it on THICK, for real, and just going all out with that gruff, take-no-crap tone of voice.

He got kind of scared, and tried to defend himself and explain what he was doing, but I was having none of that. I just growled at him and told him that the time for excuses was over and he needed to take responsibility for his own actions. (Possibly my exact words, which is likely why he didn't understand me due to his limited vocabulary. Oh, well. I was feeling righteous.)

Man, once I started snarling at him, he just broke down. He lost his will to talk back to me and tears just started coming out. I don't know if I had ever seen him cry before. But I've sure seen him make other people cry. He just doesn't know how to learn a lesson. I like to think I was was teaching him a lesson right there. I was kind of surprised because I wasn't really TRYING to make him cry. It was just sort of an added bonus.

The second kid I made cry was a totally different situation. This first grade boy loves to play football. On Friday, I had played with him and a few other kids for over an hour. After that long, I just got tired of it and decided to take a break. But this kid kept coming up to me, begging me to play with him again. He wanted to practice running routes (which would have been pointless, as kids that age are not clever enough to learn route-running).

I just told him I'd had enough and didn't want to play any more. He kept tugging my arm. I told him to ask someone else to play with him. He replied that he didn't like playing with big kids (even though I am basically just a really big kid). I asked him to ask another staff member. He did, and my coworker said he didn't want to play, either. So the kid came back to me and kept yanking my arm.

You ever been relentlessly arm-yanked? It gets kind of annoying when it doesn't stop even after you tell the person doing it to cut it out. I told the kid that I'd be willing to play catch, but I didn't want to play one-man football. Unbelievably, this was an unacceptable compromise for him.

He kept yanking my arm and begging me to play. He even gave me the puppy dog face. I almost gave in at that point, but then I thought, "Gosh darn it, Captain America would not surrender, and neither will I!"

I was immovable. I was a sturdy tree, rooted firmly in the grass right next to the river of truth and justice.

Eventually, the young lad began to cry. It wasn't just one or two tears, either. They streamed out of his eyes. He even grabbed my hand and wiped his tears with my hand. A sob or two escaped his breath. He continued to pester me.

I would not surrender. That A on Cap's head doesn't stand for France, dammit.

Eventually, he gave up and walked away to sulk sadly by himself. I hope I toughened him up a bit. Kids should be playing with other kids their own age, anyway. It kind of makes me sad that I (unintentionally) had to make him cry, but hopefully he'll learn how to be a man. Because he does have athletic potential. He's just a first grader and I think he can catch a football better than some third graders. Who knows, maybe I'll have had a role in molding him for a future in a professional sports league.

Job satisfaction. I've got plenty of it.