Shit just got real

    I meant to do a post about Christmas, but that never happened.  Sorry.  I’ll try next year, I promise.  This week was just a little hectic.
    Not because of the normal “getting ready for Christmas” stuff, though I did have that, too.  This week (and the beginning of next week) is Vacation Club for the Y After School Program.  That means that all three programs in my town are in one elementary school.  Granted, some kids don’t come at all, and most kids don’t come every day, so it’s not as bad as it sounds.  It’s not like the shit show it was on the 17th when it snowed and my town cancelled all after school activities, which meant none of the three programs could be at their regular school.  They were all at the Y.  The other times this happens are known in advance, and some kids don’t come (like the day before Thanksgiving, for instance).  Not that day.  That day, there were a billion kids and no one had more than two hours notice to pack up their program, figure out a plan with their staff, and reroute the buses and get all the necessary filed and such to the big Y.  This was far better executed, but still not my idea of a super great time.
    I’m not a morning person, and the program is open 7:30-5:45 all during vacation (except Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, when we’re opened till 2:00).  I guess I lucked out, because I thought we’d all have to be there from open to close unless something epic came up, but I was wrong.  I was in at 9:00 and off at 5:15 on Monday, had the good fortune to be off on Tuesday, and I was/am in at 8:30 and off at 5:00 the rest of vacation.  8:30 is hideously early for me to have myself together and be somewhere, but I’ve done it, and I haven’t been late.
    The nice part is there are a bunch of teachers around, and usually the directors of all three programs are there.  We also get a half hour break for lunch, and we don’t have to deal with kids!  The kind of icky part was that they incorporated all the programs, so I have kindergartners like I usually do, but I had all the kindergartners in all three programs, so I only knew some of the kids, and the kids from different programs didn’t know each other (because kindergarten is the youngest you can be to be in the program).  But now I’m going to miss the kids from the other two programs when I come back from residency at my Master’s program.  Except for one, which I have mixed feelings about.
    He apparently goes to a therapeutic school, because he can’t handle a regular school.  What?  What the hell does that mean?  But I soon saw.  He has major anger issues, as in if you tell him to stop playing with the foldaway wall and sit down, he tells you he is getting really mad, then runs away somewhere, lies down, and screams and thrashes on the floor.  Or, if you’re really lucky, you’re in close enough proximity to him that he hurls himself at you, and you have to do your best to restrain him or he may do you and himself serious damage.  The weird thing is, when he’s not mad, he’s really sweet.  But he and his older brother can’t be together in the program, because about 90% of the time, they end up fighting each other.  What the hell?
    So the director of the program he’s in also told me that it’s known by both children that their father (who is not with the mother) only loves the kindergartner, not the other child, and so only sees my kid, not the other one.  Excuse me?  I don’t know how someone could even vocalize that to their ex spouse/partner/whatever kind of relationship the parents had, let alone the kids.
    Ugh.  So I do the best I can do, watching this kid out of the corner of my eye always, and trying to be as nice as I can so I don’t set him off.  He’s decided he likes me (sometimes), and he’ll ask to sit on my lap or ask me to pick him up and hold him.  Once I do that, it’s hard to remove him.  Which is mostly okay, because I usually have another teacher with my group, so she can deal with things that I can’t right then.
    Only yesterday was a little scary.  My group had free choice, so some kids were playing dress up, I was playing UNO with a kid, another kid was playing with these magnetic building block things, and the others were playing a game with another teacher.  There was a third teacher kind of surveying everything, but of course, when everyone’s eyes were off the dress up kids, the problem child punched a kid in the face.  This poor kid comes out crying, and he had some pink around his eye, so I had no doubt he was telling the truth.  I try to tell the problem child to put down what he’s playing with, and come out of the room to have a time out against the wall for a second.
    He threatens to throw the phone at me.  Now, this wasn’t a play phone.  It was a legit phone that at one point had a cord running into the wall and people could call actual people on it.  Absolutely not.  And there were still other kids in the room.  So I hustle over there, and he drops it.  Good.  He also starts to the thrashing thing.  So I wrap my arms around him, and end up with my hands around his wrists somehow.  All I know is, I can’t let him hurt the other kids or himself.  I don’t really care about me, I’ve had worse things happen than a bear-hugged five year old trying to hurt me.  So another teacher gets the other kids out of the room, and he’s still screaming and thrashing, and eventually it ends up with him on the floor kicking, and me trying to hold his legs down.  Miraculously, he had kind of given up on his arms at that point, but before he was on the floor he managed to slap my collarbone good a few times, and get some little kid kicks in at my stomach.  Lovely.
    So two of the directors happen upon us (I can only imagine the racket we were making, and if they didn’t hear it, I’m sure one of the teachers with me flagged them down), and the director of my program takes over.  But right before they arrive, he’s begging me to let him go, and I tell him I can’t, he might hurt himself or someone else and I can’t let that happen.  I tell him it’s not okay to tell people you’ll throw things at them, or to kick and slap them.  I tell him I don’t like being slapped.  He mishears me and says it’s good that I like being slapped, because he wants to slap and kick me for trying to put him in time out.  I correct him.  Enter the two directors.
    I had to write up an incident report, and the kid’s father got called and told he had to come pick him up.  All three directors asked me if I needed a few minutes, but honestly I didn’t.  If I sat by myself, I would have just gotten more and more angry that this kid thought he could freak out that badly over a time out, and equally angry at the adults in his life who hadn’t taught him better than that.  Instead, I had gone back to playing UNO with a kid who sadly isn’t in my program, but many times that day told me he loved me, and earlier that day had told me I was the best teacher ever.  That’s what I want to do after dealing with a kid filled with so much rage.  I want to be near someone with that much positive feeling for me.
    The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, and though I by and large love my job, I’m kind of dreading seeing that kid again.  I am definitely not going to pick him up or let him sit in my lap until he apologizes to me, which I feel may never happen.  I’ll miss the kids who aren’t in my program, but it will be a relief to not have to be so vigilant.  Of course kids get into stuff they shouldn’t and push the envelope on what they can get away with, but no one in my program has rage problems like that, and it will be nice to have a break from that.