"Every Time I See My Smiley Faces, It Makes Me Frown"

School is out, yet we still have Jayden's smiley faces on our front door for everyone to see.

For those of you who may not know, this was a HUGE deal for Jayden. For the the first few months of school, the incentive for good behavior in the classroom was going to the treasure box. Sounds exciting, right? Well, Jayden was so excited to be able to go get a "treasure" (you know, such precious items as plastic whistles that spray copious amounts of spit when you blow in them and the like). The only catch was that you only got to go to the treasure box on Fridays, and then only if you had kept your star up all week.

That doesn't sound too tough, does it? Well, this was about the most difficult thing ever for Jayden. Sir Edmund Hillary may have climbed Mt. Everest, but did he keep his star the whole way up? Probably not! You see, it was pretty much a "one-strike-you're-out" kind of deal. When you acted up, down came the star, and thus the chance for the spit-whistle treasure. They had other "punishments" for continued bad behavior (which, by the way, Jayden has informed us "is never funny"), but once Jayden's star would come down, he just didn't care anymore. Who cares about not being able to go to the "centers" or a shorter recess if you're chances for the coveted noise-making-spit-rocket is gone?

Each week Jayden would commit to making it to Friday with his star still shining brightly on the wall, and each week it would come down before Friday. In fact, it would usually come down on Monday. In the morning. We think Jayden would walk into the classroom and his mere presence would cause his star to become Haley's comet and hurtle to the floor.

What, you may be wondering, were Jayden's heinous crimes? Well, you know, stuff like standing on his chair, being a snake under the desks as the teacher is giving a lesson, putting his nap time mat on the bathroom floor (GROSS!!!! these are five-year old boys we're talking about...you know how well they aim!), and of course, the biggest and most oft repeated infraction, refusing to lay perfectly still in a comatose state for the one hour mandatory nap time (don't even get us started on the absurdity of a one hour nap time in kindergarten!).

Jayden's teacher, Mrs. Copeland, has been teaching kindergarten for a very long time, so she's certainly dealt with boys like Jayden before, right? Imagine our "joy" at receiving a personal phone call from Jayden's teacher and being told that she was very seriously considering quitting the teaching profession, and our son was a major factor! Yep, those are the phone calls you aren't so excited to get.

Mrs. Copeland decided not to quit, and implemented a new incentive policy: smiley faces! Every day the students would have a behavior report indicated by a smiley face, a straight face, or a frowny face, and you only lost your star if you got a frowny face. At first, Jayden kept losing his star pretty much right away (sometimes he made it all the way to Wednesday!). Around February he started coming home with more smiley faces and straight faces than frowny ones. On April 1st, he saw his smiley face on his monthly behavior chart and told us that he wanted to fill the whole thing up with smiley faces. He prayed every night that he would be good the next day and be able to get a smiley face.

AND HE DID IT!!!!

Way to go Jayden! He even got to get as many spit-launchers as he could stand, because he visited the treasure box every week. Mrs. Copeland told us on the last day of school that she was so proud of Jayden. She said this is why she teaches, to see that kind of change in the children. Mrs Deas, the teacher's assistant, even started crying when Jayden went to tell her good-bye.

So now, school is out, and we still have the smiley faces on our door for everyone to see. Jayden said "Every time I see my smiley faces, it makes me frown." Well, of course it does, Jayden! We all frown at smiley faces! Actually, we were pretty confused. Maybe he realized that the spit-whistle wasn't all it was cracked up to be, or maybe he noticed that they mysteriously disappeared whenever mom or dad found them around the house, but apparently, the smiley faces were making him sad. When we asked him why, he said that the chart full of smiley faces makes him miss Mrs. Copeland and Mrs. Deas. You would have thought that we would have taken it down, but we're so proud of him that we force him to endure the pain of loss and separation, just so we can gloat and smile in the face of his misery. OK, maybe we should just file it away! If he ever gets too chipper we can always bring out the smiley face chart and mellow him out a bit!

Jayden on one of his last days of school, before he realized the torture induced by smiles