This morning I mentioned to my student teacher that I slept weird on my pillow, but luckily I already had a chiropractor appointment for after school. (I’m super exciting, I know.)

She said, and I am not exaggerating, “You take such good care of yourself!”

I laughed, and told her I would have to tell my therapist about this.

The truth is that last year I realized it takes a lot to regulate this life of mine: Almost 50, betrayal trauma, I’m a teacher, and of course, I’m a single mama!

It could be a song, but this is serious stuff, nothing I could try to set to We Didn’t Start the Fire or something. But, it could be done, I’m sure. Even if just about a day at school…

All day I am trying to help a classroom full of amazing small humans regulate themselves… and friends… I don’t know if you’ve heard, but —

You need to co-regulate to regulate a child.

Today I regulated through someone or another:

screaming in the hallway, crawling in the library corner, hiding behind my table to read, dropping water bottles, cleaning up water with paper towels for what must have been the first time in their life, water dripping back to the floor, crying, falling, complaining that their scratch really really hurt and yes they would like a bandaid but that bandaid is too small for their scratch, dropping a chair, sneaking reading, swinging a necklace, chewing a necklace, saying someone was stupid for chewing a necklace, book borrowing, book not-giving-back, more crying, saying someone was stupid for needing their book back, saying they were allowed to call someone stupid since they are stupid, missing an invisible pen and not enjoying my joke “I haven’t seen it, but if it’s invisible, how could I?” stealing someone’s invisible pen —-

(and then it was morning recess)

The day continued while I regulated through someone or another:

— wanting a community snack after snack time, telling me someone was crying, telling me that someone shook their fist at them, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking instead of listening, finishing their work before we started, missing directions, wandering the room, flying their painted pollinators into the paper garden over and over, saying “What answers? There’s no answers…” over and over because they thought I was talking to them about the pollinator garden when I was actually talking to the other kids who were done and were supposed to be reading the riddles on the whiteboard, fiddling through my things, pressing our doorbell multiple times, ignoring, ignoring, ignoring, talking back, crying about a consequence, not caring about a consequence, giving up, sliding down the railing, climbing up the railing, resting on the railing, saying, “I’m not climbing,” digging at an anthill instead of lining up…

And those are just the things I can
remember.
From today.

So, that’s why I have to “take care of myself…” because it takes a lot of therapy, meditation, tapping, affirmations, chiropractic care, massage, salt spas, acupuncture and walks in the sunshine to do this job that I absolutely love.

One of my second-graders loves to crush pretzels on the floor.
I may be exaggerating.
He’s done it twice.
Once into the carpet – that was a big mess.
And today just a small pretzel crushing.
Both he cleaned up, of course.
Natural consequences for the win.
My student teacher wonders if maybe it was just so fun to crunch them under his feet, like a sensory experience.
I wonder if we could find bubble wrap.
I say how I love to crunch acorns under my feet.
She shares how she purposely walks on leaves for the crunch.
And later as I take my afternoon dog walk, and step with intention on those acorns, I think again of Mardi who loved the crunch of acorns on a walk.
I wonder if I could collect acorns and sticks and leaves and bubble wrap and we could see what he likes best.
Or, we could have a March Madness bracket of things that are fun to crunch under our feet with the whole class!
acorns
sticks
leaves
bubble wrap
gravel
ice
What else could we do a crunch investigation with?