What's a little fighting among friends?

Thursday night, Caren had parent-teacher conferences, so I had the rare opportunity to pick up Evan and Rosana from their preschool daycare. It's always a special treat. Usually Caren does the picking up, so when I walk through their classroom door instead, they are about as excited to see me as they ever get. Unfortunately, my enjoyment of Thursday's childcare transfer experience was marred by a report from Evan's teacher.

"Evan had a rough afternoon," she said in an oddly happy voice as I walked through the door. I sighed.
"Uh oh. What happened?"
"He started a fight. And he also threw some things." I sighed again. Caren gets reports like this at least once a week. Sometimes more.
"Why?" I asked. His teacher paused.
"Well, I think maybe some other kids were egging him on." I hesitated.
"Well, which is it?" I asked. "Did he start the fight, or did other kids egg him on?" She paused again.
"I'm not sure," she said finally. "I didn't really see it. But he was definitely throwing things. I saw that."
"Uh, okay. Thanks." Yeah. Thanks for nothing.

It doesn't help that I'm especially irritated by her tone of voice. She seemed all too happy to report that Evan had been acting up. Instead of acting like she wants to fix the problem, she seemed to be relish the act of telling me that my son was acting up. But when pressed for details, she had no idea what was actually going on. How is it that she admits that she's not really sure what happened, and yet she is very sure that it was my son who started the fight?

I can appreciate that she wants me to talk to him about not fighting. And I really want to be on her side and help make her job easier. But what I say to him is going to be different depending on the situation that led up to the fighting. If Evan hit someone with little to no provocation, that's one thing. But if kids were teasing him for ten minutes before he finally lashes out in frustration, that's quite another. The idea that the circumstances made a difference has obviously not occurred to anyone.

This is very frustrating. I suspect this is another case of "boys will be boys," and after all the time I've spent trying to get that idea out of my children's heads, well, I hope you'll understand when I say that it's pissing me off. I suspect that the teachers are letting the boys say and do whatever they want short of actually throwing punches. In fact, I know this is the case, because Evan tells me that one of their favorite games is "fighting." From his descriptions, it sounds more like it would be more accurate to call it roughhousing. But as anyone who has ever had little kids knows, roughhousing among a group of three- and four-year-olds can escalate into a brawl rather quickly.

The teachers are creating a no-win situation by allowing the roughhousing to happen. For one thing, the kids call it fighting. While I am in full agreement that roughhousing isn't actually fighting per se, I still find it hard to understand why you'd want to send kids the message that it's okay to "fight." The other problem is that when I've asked Evan to not participate in these "fights," the result is that he's singled out as the only boy who doesn't do it. He was starting to be teased by his classmates for being different. As a person who found it very difficult to make friends when I was little, that seemed to be leading down a path that I didn't want to see him go down, so I relented and told him it was okay to roughhouse as long as he made sure to stop if anyone was getting mad or sad.

Frankly, I'm having a hard time believing that Evan could really be giving them such a hard time. He's a sweet little boy, and it usually takes very little effort to get him to fall into line. I'm one of the lucky few parents who have a kid who you can simply ask not to do something. If you explain why, most of the time he'll agree with you and you'll see a noticeable change in his behavior going forward. When I asked him not to participate in the fights, I suggested that if the boys decided to fight he could say "C'mon guys, someone is going to get hurt. Let's do something else instead." Two days later, he came back to me and told me that when he'd tried it, they just ignored him and fought anyway. When I asked him what he said, he repeated what I'd told him almost word for word, and perfectly mirroring my pleading tone of voice. The fact that teachers are having so many problems with him leads me to suspect that they aren't trying very hard.

Though it's frustrating, I'm trying to keep in mind that he only has about two more months of preschool to go before we get to summer break. Over the summer, we're moving, and then Evan will start kindergarten and we will find a different preschool for Rosana. I'm hopeful that the greater structure of a kindergarten classroom will eliminate most of the free time the kids currently fill with roughhousing, and the problem will solve itself.

In the mean time, I guess boys will be boys, just as preschool teachers will be unwitting tools of the patriarchy. Whether I like it or not.