ninanevermore

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...threatens to make her 4 year old ride home in the truck of the car if he doesn't stop screaming at the top of his lungs from the back seat?

Understand, it's a small car. Take into account that the child has a very healthy set of lungs. Keep in mind that it had been a very long day at the office for me, but not as long as it was for his teachers, judging from the reports I'd had to sign and the call I'd gotten at work from the director of the center asking, "Do you have any suggestions on how we can handle him when he gets like this?"

She was sympathetic. Her own child is bipolar, she told me. But we need to find a solution for my son's acting out. I agreed.

I talked to my little guy about what all he'd done that day, including biting a child who had dared attempt to play with "his dirt" on the playground (he must have been building a dirt structure and another boy tried to commandeer the soil for his own nefarious purposes).

My son was outraged that his teacher had written notes to me. What happens at daycare is supposed to stay at daycare, in his mind. That they could disclose his antics to his mother seemed like a huge invasion of privacy. The idea made him scream in fury.

My threat was implied. After an order to stop screaming didn't get him to stop, I casually asked, "Do you want to ride home in the trunk of the car? It's dark in there, but you could scream all you wanted."

I felt like a heel, but those muffled sobs were so much easier to listen to.

He doesn't need to know that I would never do that to him.

We'll just keep that our little secret.

Shhhhhhhhh.

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