Jack's in trouble again. This time the little yellow note from his after-school dojo says he wouldn't stay in his seat, but usually the notes say he wouldn't stop talking, or clowning around. I think it's all pretty typical 6-year-old boy stuff, but a couple weeks ago we freaked out when we got one that said he punched another student; follow up with the teacher confirmed what Jack said all along--the other kid did punch him first.

His infractions aren't usually very serious, but lately there seem to be a lot of them. The dojo uses a green-yellow-red chart to track behavioral problems. For yellow, we take away TV and computer privileges for the night. This time, because he was on yellow Monday and on red Tuesday--and because we're seeing at least one yellow note a week--we also took away his GameBoy, and he doesn't get any of these privileges back until the weekend--if he stays on green for the rest of the week. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

Jack went to bed last night crying and screaming "It's not fair!" This kind of battle takes so much out of all of us. We've tried spanking, but finally figured out that if it makes Mommy and Daddy cry, we need to find another way. We're all worn out from the battle.

I was still drinking my coffee this morning and watching the last seconds of the story about the plane crash in the Democratic Republic of Congo on TV when Jack crawled into my lap. I turned off the TV, and Jack asked if people had died in the crash. I told him yes, at least 40 people had died. After a second he asked how many people lived. When I explained that they don't give that information, he asked "Why don't they say how many people lived? Why do they only tell you the bad stuff?"

All those little yellow notes aren't really all that important.