The Weird Kid....

Do you ever worry that YOUR kid might just be the WEIRD kid at school? I’m not talking about the “march to the beat of her own drum” type weird. I’m talking “the smelly kid who stands in the corner alone snacking on her own boogers” weird.

It never crossed my mind that MY child could be the weird one. She’s beautiful!! She’s blonde with blue eyes. She’s really quite social and smart as a whip (too smart if you ask me). She’s into the normal things like dancing, gymnastics, princesses and ponies. Okay so I may have overlooked her tendency to watch episodes of “My Little Pony” in Korean on youtube but that’s not really so much of a concern. Until last week when she laid this whopper on me….

Let me preface by saying that she is fully potty trained and goes on her own, at will. But we still have the butt-wiping issue. It’s not that she doesn’t know to wipe her butt after she poops, it’s that she has these little alligator arms that just don’t quite reach. We have had many a conversation (not to mention the practice sessions) stressing the importance of letting her teachers know when she has to poop so that they can help in this arena (God bless preschool teachers).

So scene set, I’m picking her up from school and on our drive home we are having the usual conversation about how the day went.

“how was your day today honey?”

“it was good.”

“Did anything happen today?”

“Yes William wouldn’t play with me and told me I wasn’t his friend anymore.”

“Well that’s not very nice.”

“No and Maddy and Lilly kept running away from me and wouldn’t let me make bracelets with them.”

“Gosh I’m sorry I bet that hurt your feelings.”

“yes and I forgot to tell miss Julie today that I had to go poop. And I didn’t wipe very well so later it started itching a little so I stuck my finger in it and then my finger got poop on it and smelled like poop”

Dead silence as I try to comprehend what she said and how to respond to such a statement

“sometimes I forget to wash my hands”

“baby what happened????? Your finger smelled like poop???? When did you realize this?”

“oh when I was setting the table for lunch- [proudly] I was the table-eater [leader] today!!”

“well did you wash your hands then?”

“yep! And I washed my bottom out in the classroom sink”

Another moment of stunned silence

“um, did miss Julie help you wash your bottom in the sink?”

“no, I didn’t want her to see so I waited until it was just the kids”

“you washed your bottom out in the sink in front of the kids???”

“yep, just the little ones”

That was about the time she got bored with talking to me and asked me if we could have “quiet time” the rest of the way home.

I may have failed as a mother with not addressing this further. But sometimes there are just soooo many things wrong that I get overwhelmed and don’t even know where to start addressing. So we just let that one lie. Although I did casually ask the teacher the next morning at drop off “So how is RJ doing?......socially?”

My only shred of hope through this event is that maybe she set William, Maddy, and Lilly’s place BEFORE she realized there was poop on her finger.

-Ashford