Thank you all so much for your support and advice and affirmation. You all had great advice too (um, including the hitting back which, to be honest, has been on my mind and I’m SO relieved others would not find this totally unacceptable — as a last resort, obviously), and I’m so glad I have my own blog to use as a reference guide to parenting. Kick. Ass.

So, I spoke with the teacher on the phone. My basic points were the following:

1. That I realize I might be overreacting to the incident on the playground, and that I didn’t want to sound like an overzealous or ‘helicopter’ parent. I think after knowing so many teachers and hearing their stories about parents who approach them throwing accusations and not accepting any blame, I am probably paranoid about being that parent. But also, I wanted to immediately put it out there that I wasn’t blaming her. I did not want to make her feel defensive and if the conversation started out that way it would have immediately gone downhill.

2. To make sure that this has not happened before.

3. To make sure that if she sees it ever happening again, I would be notified.

4. To make sure that Bean was not being bullied by LMKR or anyone else.

5. To find out if Bean and Buddy were excluding themselves from the rest of the class.

6. To relay exactly what I saw, and the whole Closed Fist Punch part.

This is what I found out:

1. She has not witnessed this before. Of course, it’s only the second week of school and Bean and LMKR are both new students. New students need some adjustment dealing with school, and obviously with each other as well.

2. Along those same lines, she has not witnessed any bullying in the classroom or at the playground. While she can’t say that this kind of thing won’t happen again, she will definitely make it a point to keep her eye on this more now.

3. That Bean and LMKR both have strong personalities. I knew that already about Bean, and from I witnessed, I gathered as much about LMKR. Going back to Point 1, they are going to need to figure out how to deal with each other.

4. That when she had Bean and LMKR talk it out, she asked if they had anything to say to each other. They immediately both apologized. Yikes. I knew exactly what that meant, and I’ll get back to that in a second. What she tried to do was figure out why LMKR had hit Bean in the first place, and to ask Bean how she had felt about that (exactly what Rachel advised).

5. That after we left the playground, she talked to LMKR again, and then again before LMKR left school for the day. She told me that LMKR relayed that Bean had been doing something to her and Girl 1 (the swing-stealer) prior to The Punch — something about pouring dirt on some rocks they were playing with and they had asked her to stop and she hadn’t. The teacher also added, “Of COURSE that does not excuse any kind of hitting at all and any kind of aggression like that is absolutely not tolerated.” Her point was that she was trying to get to the root of the problem with LMKR so they could figure out how to handle it differently should a similar problem arise.

6. That the teacher was absolutely mortified that she had not only turned her head away for a moment and not witnessed any of it, but that my ILs were there for it all too. MOR. TI. FIED. It was actually the second time she said that to me. I may have been more cynical about that, had I not been there everyday watching her count the kids every minute. I told her I didn’t blame her at all, and she obviously cannot keep her eyes on everyone at all times. Still, she was clearly embarrassed about this.

7. It seemed to me that she was also concerned about the Closed Fist Punch, but she was trying not to let on to me that she was. She’s very calm and collected, as she should be, and I predicted she would be as much before I spoke with her. If she had gasped or acted disgusted, it only would have fed into my anger and I know that she shouldn’t do that. And I’m glad she acted as I expected her to — I have more respect for her. But, she did say in very diplomatic terms that the Closed Fist was ‘of concern’ and that in her many years of teaching, it has been a long, long, LONG time since she has seen or heard about that from a child. Maybe I was reading into it, but I think she was trying to circle around the idea that it’s a learned behavior without actually saying those words, as it obviously sounds accusatory.

8. Finally, I found out that Bean and Buddy do still stick close together, but Montessori is also based on a lot of individual play. Still, during group play, they are together. Eventually they are going to be separated into different classrooms (in a few weeks) and I’m hoping that helps more than it hurts.

I also thanked her for the background information (Bean not stopping with the dirt when they asked her to). I don’t want the teacher to think that I believe my kids are perfect or without fault. It actually made me a little relieved to know it wasn’t just a random act of bullying, and although the punch was clearly not the right solution, at least there was a reason for it (from LMKR’s POV at least).

As for Bean apologizing… I acknowledged that this was probably our fault. Apparently Bean has been apologizing a lot at school, without really knowing or explaining why. As the teacher said, “It’s very sweet, but what I’m trying to get out of her is an explanation and not an apology.” I think at home, we are teaching both kids to apologize just to apologize. (What can I say; we are passing on our guilt.). When the twins do something to upset each other, we are probably too quick to tell them to apologize to each other so we can all move on. Clearly, they know when to say it, but they don’t know why. Yikes. That has everything to do with our laziness as a parent and not taking the time to figure out how either one is feeling about it, or working out a solution. So, I told the teacher that we would work on that.

Overall, the conversation went very well. To be honest, I think we were both dreading it a little. At the end, the teacher told me several times that she was so glad I called.

My first parent-teacher serious issue conversation. What a milestone… for me.

Fifteen more years of this though? Seriously?

And despite having a better understanding of it all, I will say that LMKR is still on my shit list. I probably brought up the Closed Fist Punch a few too many times; I blame my vindictive and grudge-holding nature. She might be fine… but dude. Girl HITS WITH A CLOSED FIST. What the fuck? Just keep that shit away from my kids please.

***

This morning, G told me that Bean saw him packing some oatmeal packets in his briefcase for work. She eats oatmeal every single day for breakfast without fail. So she suddenly was very upset that he was taking her oatmeal.

When he pointed out that he was taking the oatmeal flavors that she doesn’t like (we buy the variety pack boxes), she went from CRYING to huge smile in half a second.

In the meantime, my MIL was asking Bean, “Can you tell us why you are upset? Can you say, ‘I feel…?’”

Bean slowly said, “I feel… MUCH BETTER!”

*sigh*

Small steps.

***

Again: crazy if you read this far. Maybe I’ll get better at the parenting thing and the blogging thing. Right now I feel like I’m only making right turns. With every milestone… I start at Step One again. Phew.