Anger Management, 1st Grade Style

It's hard to say if today's kids are under more stress than kids from, say, 35 years ago. I mean when you really look at it, the world's not THAT different. Sure technology has added a few wrinkles, and bad news is more readily available, but the core stress-inducing elements are relatively unchanged. In fact, there's a timelessness to many of them. Afterall, we had a long drawn-out war with unclear objectives in the 1970's too. We had Middle East hostilities to worry about. We had shady political practices, corruption and unhealthy bipartisan cooperation. This generation may have Wikileaks, but we had Watergate. We had stagnant home values, and lifeless stock markets. Heck, I can remember many sleepless nights in 1st Grade worrying about rising oil prices and the potential effects of inflation on an already overburdened economy. My kids seem so proud of these difficult days they live in, almost like these are Historic Days or something, a badge of honor. "Hey, we had massive, crippling National Debt back when I was a kid, too, you know, not to mention really bad fashion!", I proudly tell my children.

Here's the difference, though. Today's kids are being taught how to handle these crises, while my generation was pretty much clueless. The fact that I came from a clueless generation is not too surprising, considering this is the same generation that thought nothing of the dangers of second-hand smoke from cigarrettes. I also proudly boast to my kids that I survived an era in which seat belts in cars were not used to save lives, instead they were just those annoying straps that were designed to be shoved into the seat cushions to allow all 5 of my siblings to fit in the back seat of our Ford Country Squire station wagon...while my Mom and Dad puffed away on cigarrettes in the front seats. I also survived an era in which I was allowed to go outside in my neighborhood without adult supervision and without any means whatsoever of getting in touch with adult supervision, other than yelling as loud as I could yell. Those were dangerous days in the 1970s. How any of us survivied I'll never know. Thank goodness for cell phones!

But anyway, I'm getting sarcastic AND digressing...let's get back to sarcasm and handling stress. Gwinnett County schools weren't voted #1 Urban School System in America for nothing. The other day our over-burdened 6 year old Christopher came home from school with his first psychotherapy self-assessment. You may think that sounds a bit excessive for a 1st grader, but Gwinnett County understands today's children. As part of his usual collection of paperwork in his Friday Folder my wife Laurie found a crazy piece of dark, scribbled artwork. Fearing that Christopher had suddenly regressed to Pre-K art skill levels, Laurie questioned him on it. His answer: "My teacher told us when we're in a bad mood we should either 'scribble it out' or punch a pillow". The dark scribbled artwork, it turns out, was Christopher's interpretation of a very bad day. While technically that still qualifies as "art", it served more as "therapy" in this case.

"Brilliant!", was my reaction. I never had an outlet like that when I was a kid. All I had for venting frustrations were my 3 brothers, and believe me, we vented our frustrations on eachother on a daily basis. Which occassionally led to our Mom or Dad venting their frustrations on us, but the system seemed to balance itself correctly. Thankfully, not one of us ever dealt with bouts of Depression.

I'm not too worried about our 2 older Middle School sons, Alex and Adam. I'm confident that if they're in a bad mood they'll find a way to let us know. They'll text us, or tweet us, or post it on FB for 200 friends to read, and one of our distant cousins who "friended" them will email my brother, who will tell his wife, who will call my wife, who will let me know the second it happens. That's a system I'm confident will work. It usually takes about 10 minutes for all those pieces to fall into place.

But now with Christopher, in addition to checking his progress with reading, writing, and arithmetic, Laurie and I have the added responsibility of assessing his artwork to determine if his mind is in a positive or negative place. Is that an "Angry Scribble", a "Draw for Help" or just an accidental wandering crayon mark? Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Did he mean to use excessive black crayon marks, or is he trying to tell us something? I'm really not sure if I'm up for this added parental responsibility. Art was never one of my strong points.

The good news is, we'll know for sure when Christopher comes home from school in a good mood. When we flip through his Friday Folder and see one of his old favorite drawings of the doomed Titanic sinking into the abyss of the deadly dark sea, we'll know he's in one of his usual great moods! Nothing to worry about.