This year I’m going to start tough. When the first graders come in, the welcome lesson I’ll teach is that I’m no sucker. I’ve noticed a pattern over the years, certain behaviors and statements kids make when they are trying to manipulate a situation. Jumping on it first will take the power away before they realize they might actually have some. Yes, this will be the year of total classroom control.
When we have our introductory class meeting I’ll look them all straight in the eyes and tell them to not bother attempting a third or fourth chance at something, that the cute little faces that melt hearts of parents and grandparents won’t work with me. I’ve been in this too long. Looking up with crossed hands and hopeful eyes won’t make me let them do something I already said they couldn’t, and the four slurred measures of pleaseeeeeeeee…is just a lame and pitiful response provoking no emotional response from me whatsoever.
It takes us teachers some time to believe it, but we eventually learn what conniving little creatures children can be; little Lucy Ricardos, thinking up ways to get out of, or included in something all the time.
This year it ends. This year I declare victory over my own domain. This year, I’ll beat them at their own game before it even begins. Year after year, as though passed along like tradition, children do it, and do it everywhere. They play the “cute card” and not only from the bottom of the deck, but from decks made up of nothing but cute cards.
A discussion that took place last year clinched it for me. Somehow these little politicians got into sharing looks and phrases they used on their parents to get what they wanted out of them. We went around the circle, displaying money-face after money-face, guaranteed by the user to deliver. Some held simple pushed out purse lips on a head looking down with eyes looking up. Some were drama laden drops to knees, folded hands outstretched toward the heartstrings of the victim-authority who if not careful will be giving in to this slick little actor, saying “Oh, alright! Go ahead.”
You can beat them at their own games, however. Give them a list of choices they don’t really want, but would do. Add to it some real undesirables. My choices for kids become: reading, writing a book, doing a science experiment, playing math games, playing a language arts game called Suffixes and Prefixes, looking in magazines for things that start with J, and doing math flash cards. The last three, I have found to be real enthusiasm killers.
They choose and happily run off to a book they want to read, begin working with a friend to write and illustrate a book, take off to do a science experiment and a few want to do math games. They never saw it coming. They don’t understand yet that trumping the cute card is, and always will be, every teacher‘s game breaker,
The “Child Psychology” card.
