You Never Want to Hear...

"I got sent to the principle's office."

But that's what greeted me when I picked up Malachi this afternoon.  My heart sank and he was already tearing up without even telling me what happened.  I held my composure and got in the car and calmly asked what happened.  He said that his friend "P" has a broken collarbone.  A girl was trying to take "P's" arm-sling off.  Malachi wanted to protect his friend so he tried to get the girl away from "P", but accidentally hit the girl's face with his elbow.  He told her sorry, but was sent to the principle's office.  He said that he was so scared to be in the office because he thought the principle would spank him. (those days of spanking in schools are long gone, but he didn't know that!) I knew that there was probably an explanation in his folder so when I parked the car at home I opened up to read the note.  It said that he had accidentally hit the girl in the face; he felt very bad about it and was sent to the office to figure things out.  But he was not in trouble.  Whew!  He came away with another "Green Day".  You have no idea what a relief this was.

You see tonight we had planned on taking Malachi (and the family) to McDonald's for a Happy Meal and time in the PlayPlace to celebrate a month of Green Days.  We wanted to reward him for an awesome job at school.  All Malachi had to do was get another "Green" today.  Since Malachi was already feeling horrible about what happened the last thing I wanted to do was take away this special treat.  He started whimpering when he asked if he still got to go to McDonald's.  Yes, Malachi, yes you do.

We did talk about how he was a great friend wanting to protect the other boy.  But in that circumstance, it would be best to tell the teacher or another adult about what's going on so that this accident wouldn't happen.  We also talked about how he felt being sent to the office and just think how scared he would have been if he had done something deliberately. I think this incident put the fear of the principle in him!  Life lessons are so hard sometimes, aren't they?

Congrats Malachi on a month of "Green Days"!  Let's go celebrate!!!!