Here comes trouble

As parents pick up their kids from day care, the teachers start consolidating the classes. So I never really know where I'm going to find Biscuit when I get there. Yesterday, Biscuit and a few others from his class were in the 4-year-old room. 

When I walked into the class, Biscuit was playing with two other little boys. He looked like his usual happy-go-lucky self. But as soon as he looked up and saw me, tears started to pool in his eyes, and his bottom lip started quivering.

Most days when I pick him up, I walk into the room and watch him playing until he sees me. When Biscuit sees me (or one of the other kids yells "YOUR MAMA IS HERE!"), he always yells, "MOM!" and comes running into my arms. 

As soon as I scoop him up, he chews my ear off with whatever wonderful adventure he was on. Biscuit's brain moves faster than his mouth these days, so he'll start stammering.

"Mom, Mom, um, Mom. We-we-we. Um, Mom. We-we-we-we were going on a bear hunt. And-and-and-and we had horses. Th-th-th-then we found a dog, and his-his-his name was Sparky."

But yesterday, he started walking toward me very slowly. Then the tears started to drop from his eyes, and by the time he got to me, he was wailing.

"What's wrong, baby?" I asked him. But he was crying too hard to answer me.

I told him to take a deep breath and to try to stop crying so I could understand what he was saying.

Finally, he said, "Um, Miss Nicole said I wasn't listening, and she got me in trouble." Then the wailing started again. I calmed him down again and asked him to tell me again what was wrong. He named a couple of boys he was playing with and said the teacher called them down and scolded them for not listening to her. "She got me in trouble," Biscuit said.

"Well, no," I said. "If you weren't listening to your teacher, you got YOURSELF in trouble."

More wailing. 

Miss Nicole was sitting in the lobby waiting on her ride when I got to daycare, and I was hoping she was still sitting there.

"Come on," I said to Biscuit. And we headed down the hall.

Sure enough, Miss Nicole was still sitting there.

She saw that Biscuit was crying and asked him what was wrong. Biscuit, who had the snubs by this point, just looked at the floor.

I told Miss Nicole what Biscuit told me, and I could immediately tell that she wanted to smile.

"He was following two boys who get in trouble every day, so I told him to go play in a different center," Miss Nicole said. "At first, he didn't go, so I told him he wasn't being a good listener. After I said that, he went to a different center. That's all it was. I told him he shouldn't do what those other boys do because they get in trouble a lot."

So I asked Miss Nicole out loud if she was mad at Biscuit. She said she wasn't. Then I asked Biscuit if he was mad at Miss Nicole, and he said no. I suggested to Biscuit that he give his teacher a hug, then he wished her a Happy Valentine's Day.

I had asked Miss Nicole when the incident happened, and she said it was around 2 o'clock. 

It happened at 2 p.m., and Biscuit came crying to me at 6 p.m. There's a part of me that feels horrible at the prospect of Biscuit worrying for 4 hours about whether I was going to be mad or not. Then there's another part that thinks, "Hey, at least he realizes that his actions have consequences."

I assured Biscuit that I wasn't mad at him and neither was Miss Nicole. But I also told him that he needed to listen to his teachers. We'll see how it goes.