Day 28: In Case of Emergency, Read This Book

Helping Kids Through A Bad Day

This afternoon, I was running 10 minutes behind the time I was supposed to be working with some students on responding to their reading through writing.  I had made a commitment earlier in the week not to let anything stop me from meeting with these students since that kept happening.

As I was getting nearer to the classroom (walking at a pace that is probably not allowable in an elementary school), I saw a student outside of her classroom showing signs of being frustrated.  Now, it's not unusual for this child to get upset easily.  That's just who she is.  So, against what I wanted to do, I stopped and asked, "Is everything okay?"

She blurted out her frustration and said, "I'm going somewhere else," and headed down the hallway.

That's usually not a good sign.  Not just for this kid.  For any kid.

I followed her and tried to get her to tell me where she was going, but all she said was, "I need to get outta here."

At this point, I wasn't quite sure what to do next.  I was worried that talking about what happened would upset her even more.  It turns out, a few kids in her class were reminding her not to use so much lip gloss in that kid-reminding-another-kid-sort-of-way (think poor choice of words and a negative tone of voice).

So I turned to the emergency, never-fail, guaranteed to make a kid laugh book, The Blue Day Book for Kids: A Lesson in Cheering Yourself Up, by Bradley Trevor Greive.  

I told her I have the perfect book for you.  She was interested and wanted to see what I was carrying on about. It worked.  She loved relating to the different examples of blue days (and the funny pictures of animals, of course).

So if you ever find yourself in a situation where your child is too upset to think about anything but being upset, I highly recommend bringing out The Blue Day Book For Kids.

It works like a charm.