He stood in a corner, behind a cabinet, crying. His hood was pulled up tight over his head. His voice was angry coming out of his tense body.

"melanie knocked over my plant and she didn't even apologize and she wrecked it and now all the roots are out and it's dead and she wasn't even looking where she was going and then I got in trouble and I don't want to leave 'cause I'm crying . . . "

I let him collect himself and then we walked upstairs to my classroom.

It breaks my heart that this kid has to get all worked up over someone accidentally knocking over his plant, because he has so little in his life that belongs to him or that he has control over. I swear, I was ready to cry, and you can ask anyone I work with: I don't go there at work very often.

He and I sat down and talked it through. You're right, if someone breaks your stuff or hurts your plant, they should fix it. That's called restitution, and it's the right thing to do. No, just because they knocked over your plant, you don't get to be angry and defiant and disobey your teacher. You don't get to call the teacher's assistant a name, either. Next time, you should tell the person how you're feeling, just like you told me.

No, you can't misbehave on purpose and be sent home because you just want to spend time with your dad.

My young person then went back to class to apologize to the adults he had yelled at. We made a plan for him to ask his teacher to help him talk to Melanie so that he could tell her he needed an apology. I think when the incident first occured he was too angry to hear the apology that I'm sure she gave him.

Makes you want to, oh, I don't know, kick the parents for having kids they couldn't nurture, yell at the top of your lungs that life shouldn't be so hard when you're 8 years old, go get drunk and forget, entertain fantasies of working as a bartender so you only have to deal with adult dysfunction. Until the barflies start talking about how their kid got in trouble at school today...

Harrumph.