The Art of Discipline

“MY EAR HURTS SO BAD!”

We were halfway to school, but the earache Puck had been complaining about since 6:15 that morning, seemed to be getting worse. So we took a detour to the Big House where Carrie-Bri administered a makeshift hot water bottle while I picked up Children’s Tylenol and a defunct otoscope.

By 9:45 Puck was feeling “Great!” and was on the road to school again. Pajama Day, which we of course forgot about.

3:15. Heidi and a friend were helping Puck discipline Yali in Hans’ classroom after Yali had felt the need to scream at Heidi for no good reason. Heidi wrote in yellow chalk on the board next to his chair:

“Yali’s Discipline Chair”.

I think he was so entertained by the following discussion of how to write “discipline”, that it probably wasn’t much of a punishment. Then Puck intervened to remove him from the chair.

“Puck! He has to stay there!” Heidi chastised him.

“Yeah, Puck,” said the other girl, busy writing on the whiteboard. “Don’t you know anything about disciplining children?”

Heidi put Yali back in the chair – amazingly there were no protests – and said, “Puck, if you’re thinking about getting married, you need to know how to discipline kids.”

Puck just stood there, flabbergasted.

Waiting for the boys on the front porch that afternoon were gifts from Rose – rubber tigers for Joe and a big Star Wars Lego set for Puck. After the excitement had subsided, I listened to Puck give Yali a lecture as he began piecing together his Legos…

“Now, Yali, you should not have yelled at Heidi today. You will be grounded tomorrow if you do that again. And you will get no computer. You do not treat your friends like that, Yali. I can’t believe you actually did that, Yali. That was a very bad thing to do. Very bad… Very bad. And when you do that, that makes her sad, Yali. When you go, ‘Waaaaaa!’, that makes her sad. She’s sad to see you do that, Yali. I mean, you never do that. You like Heidi!”

Later that evening, Puck had an urgent request for me, which he explained as diplomatically as possible, “Mom, can you please change Crackers’ litter box for me? I have a busy schedule. I have to eat. I have to eat a popsicle. I’ve got Legos to do… I’ve got a pretty busy schedule. I’m going to need you to do that for me.”