Both sides

So, on the second day of a parent-teacher conference odyssey, between reassuring parents that, no, really, their little darling is fine and helping other parents explain to their kids that, no, you can't get into any decent high school with grades like that, I had a minute to check my email. Lo and behold, what do I find? An email from my own kid's teacher.

It wasn't entirely unexpected. When I went to pick her up, her cot was over by the cubbies, away from everyone else. Normally, she sleeps right in the middle of the room with all the other kids. On the way out the door, she told me, "Mrs. Teacher is going to have to call some parents, but not my parents."

I kind of expected a call.

The gist of the email was "not being nice to friends, yelling at them, goofing off at naptime," etc.

After last night, I wasn't too thrilled about this, although I'm kind of expecting a rash of button-pushing behavior right now as she works to sort out the ways her life is changing. On top of that, she's spent two nights hanging out with the "big kids" at my school, and the three of us haven't had much family time because of these nighttime parent-teacher conferences. So we came home and had a big bowl of ice cream on the kitchen floor, and talked about feelings, and friends, and how to deal with both.

It's hard to sit on both sides of the table at the same time.