I frequently conduct workshops nationwide for school districts on managing peer pressure and other topics. To illustrate how tough it is to be a child, I have a cartoon in my Power Point presentation that humorously demonstrates that point. It shows a little girl who just got off the school bus entering her home after the very first day of school. She looks up at her mother with a pained expression and says, “I can’t read… I can’t write… and they won’t even let me talk.”

My audience of teachers always laugh and comment how true that is. Several years back while showing it once again to some educators in a south Texas school district, a first grade teacher raised her hand and said that she could ‘top’ that cartoon with a true story that happened in her own class.

She said that the previous year her students had attended half-day kindergarten. Today was the first day of first grade and the students were excited. Lunchtime came and the teacher began giving the class instructions about how to walk quietly in a straight line to the cafeteria so that they could eat lunch together. She relayed that one six-year-old boy was not listening to her and began to pack his backpack in anticipation of going home.

Noticing this, the teacher said she repeated her instructions and told him, “You can leave your things at your desk because we’re going to the cafeteria now for lunch. Then we’ll come back to our class. First grade lasts all day.”

She said, the little boy looked up at her, put his hands on his hips, and said,

“Who in the h%#@ signed me up for this program?”

Expectations can be everything!

P.S. I hope this brought a smile to your face as that’s the goal of this column. Please check out my other column, “The Counselor’s Corner” for a continuation of my series on helping children manage negative peer pressure.

Copyright © 2006, Sharon Scott. No reproduction without written permission from author.