Zero Tolerance

First, if you know me, you know I'm a big semantics person. Given that, I've never understood really why "tolerate" is sometimes used like its a good thing... as in I'm a very tolerant person or striving for tolerance of some sect of society. Folks, tolerate essentially means to put up with, which has pretty poor connotations - meaning, I don't LIKE it, but I'll put up with it. But, I digress, AGAIN!

One place that tolerance DOES make sense is when you are talking about zero tolerance... meaning we will not put up with it even a little bit! There are many, many, many things I have zero tolerance for like people who can't merge on the highway and nail biting and fish. I could go on and on but again, I digress. My kids school has a big zero tolerance policy on bullying. They send notes home at the beginning of school and you have to sign that you've talked to your kids about it with them. Here we are at the end of the year and my kindergartner just got caught.

They went a little lenient on him given that they do understand that A)he is 5 and B) it was a very first infraction. I'm not sure that it helps his PARENTS feel better but at least it helped his record I suppose. Apparently, the deal was that one of the kids didn't want to play with another and suggested they all stare him down instead. LOVELY.

What a proud day as a parent! So, we've had MANY conversations - and had plenty of time to do so since he wasn't allowed to play with friends all weekend. Amazing the tendency to go to the old maternal adage - if all your friends told you to jump off a bridge, would you? However, you quickly realize that the answer here, for a kindergarten aged boy is - heck yeah! Where's the bridge? That sounds like FUN! Instead, you try to give the better response - NEXT time a friend suggests something you know is not nice, hows about saying no (the schools suggestion) - but mommy of course takes it a step further - AND go find SOMEONE ELSE to play with.