How to Crush a Child's Spirit: 101

If the Learning Annex ever wants a class called, "How To Crush a Child's Spirit:101", most elementary school teachers would be qualified to teach the class. Not so much because the teachers are squelching their little spirits (though I'm certain it happens unintentionally, more often than we realize), but because we constantly police the little buttheads that say mean things to other kids.

Yesterday at my elementary school we had our Holiday Sing-Along where all the kids pack into the cafeteria and sing songs. The day before the event, a boy in my class slipped a note in my mailbox to ask if he could bring his reindeer hat to school. I told him that he could wear it to the Sing-Along.

The next day he brought his reindeer antler hat with bells to school. When we walked single file down the school hallway, he proudly wore the antlers. A few minutes after we sat down he came to me, no antlers, and said that a girl in our class told him that the hat looked stupid. I felt the heat inside my belly move to my heart and begin fuming out of the top of my head. I was so mad, fightin' mad! But there's just no reasonable justification for beating up a 9-year-old girl when you're 44. So instead, I marched right over to her and said, "Did you say something unkind to James about his hat?" To which she mumbled, "I told him it looked good."

"Really?" I quipped.

Staring at me with wide eyes, she nodded.

"Well, we will sort this out later and I really hope you are being truthful."

I told James that I spoke to the girl and that he should wear the hat because it was FANTASTIC. He shook his head and never put it back on for the rest of the day.

Even though the girl later mumbled the obligatory under-the-breath "sorry" to him, I keep thinking about how James will probably never wear a festive holiday hat again because that mean little girl said something that just ate away a piece of his spirit.

We've all had moments like that, it's just so hard to watch it happen. Mine was when I was about 9 years old also. The prettiest and most popular girl in our church choir turned to me after a rehearsal and said that I sounded awful. I stopped singing in front of people for about 5 or 6 years after that. I was traumatized. Then I got the fever of 70's and 80's rock and I was back in business, despite the opinion of that nasty little church girl.

Kids can be so cruel. I wonder where they learn it?