November 8, 2005 - Tuesday
This afternoon Harry's bus driver told me that he'd been behaving badly on the bus. She said he'd been yelling and wrestling with another boy, that he'd been ignoring her requests to quiet down, and that it was becoming a big distraction because it had been going on for a few days. She's a happy and smiling lady and apologized that she had to tell me. For a brief, irrational moment I thought she must be talking about the wrong kid. She had said something a few days ago claiming that Harry had been "spitting" at some of the other kids. I talked to Harry about that and he acknowledged part of what she'd said, but claimed that it was another boy who had started the whole thing and that it was buzzing with his lips and not literally spitting (although avid buzzing does cause saliva to mist off one's lips). Harry also had said that he'd first told the boy to stop and then buzzed back when the boy didn't, although he claimed he really hissed "inside his mouth" and didn't spit. It sounded like a good explanation at the time and we had a little discussion about appropriate responses to other kids' bad behavior.

But today, after that moment of initial disbelieve, it was clear that Harry was not an unwitting participant in whatever had been going on. "Our Harry?" his mother half-seriously asked later. The thing is that every report we've had about Harry, from his first family daycare to his kindergarten teacher, has suggested that Harry is a very well-behaved and conscientious boy. On the other hand, he can be very silly at times - he continues to be a real trial at bath time, for example - and it's easy enough for me to extrapolate and imagine just what she was talking about.

So, I had two conversations with Harry about this bus stuff, one immediately after the bus drove away and then another a bedtime, and it's my impression that Harry was doing this out-of-character behavior because he thought he could get away with it. After all, the bus driver has to drive the bus and can't really give him a think-time or anything like that. I guess kids need to be kids and push boundaries where they can.

I tried to convince Harry that just because he could do something or thought he could get away with something was not a good reason to do it. But that didn't seem to quite do it. I tried to tell Harry that the bus driver needed to drive the bus and that it could be very dangerous if she were not paying attention to where she was driving. She could crash the bus, he acknowledged. But that seemed to come off as sensationalistic. At bed time, I think I found it, I told Harry that she probably wouldn't crash, but that suggested that it was possible that maybe a dog, a cat, or a squirrel might run out into the road and that if the bus driver weren't paying attention because she was looking in the mirror to see Harry (interestingly, although not surprisingly, he seemed well acquainted with the mirror), she might hit the animal. That seemed to get his attention a little more.


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