Yellow Fever

I am haunted by the color yellow. At night, when I wake up in a cold sweat it is not due to the fact that I have been reading The Bone Collector, by Jeffrey Deaver. The real source of my concern, the thought that dominates my walk to work...

The Yellow Card.

'Have the boys started playing soccer?'

Good guess, but no. Sammy has started kindergarten. If you get in trouble in his class you have to go 'flip your card', one infraction, yellow, two infractions, orange, three infractions, red. There was a time when my oldest child got a red card, but we don't mention that in our home anymore. It's better for everyone that way.

Back to Sammy. Sammy has been in school for a grand total of 11 days so far. Three of those days when I got home he had a forlorn look on his face. He knew that he had to face the music and fess up to his foul deeds. Usually I had received advance warning from one of my numerous sources, so I already knew all of the gory details. The sordid tales of picking at the tape on the floor in class, goofing off during chapel, turning off the lights on the other boys in the bathroom. The details stumbled out of Sammy with great shame. Even on the days where he escaped the sentence of the card flip there were discussions of 'almost flipping'. It seemed to me that few and far between were the days that Sammy was not on the edge of yellow.

On Monday when he received his third yellow card, which was two days in a row, and I think three out of four I had had enough.

'To your room!' I bellowed in a fit of rage (rage might be a bit of an exaggeration, frustration? consternation?). How to deal with this? The willfulness. The disobedience.

We had a long talk, there were tears, there were harsh words spoken, there were hugs exchanged, but in the end I think the talk was fruitful, and we came to an understanding. Then I had to stop talking with Suzy and go talk with Sammy.

'Sammy, you can't keep bringing home yellow cards, bud. It just can't keep happening.'

'I know, I just forget.'

'I know you are trying, and mama and your teacher say you have been behaving well for most of the day, but you have to make good choices, OK?'

'OK.'

Well, not to jinx anything, but my sage words of wisdom, my awesome parenting seemed to really have an impact. Tuesday, green card, baby! OK, it was only one day, I admit that, but we are talking about baby steps here. If he makes it today, that will be two days in a row!

Go, Sammy, you can do it!