The Curse of the Pulled Pocket

This past September, Tyler’s first day of kindergarten was bittersweet for me. As a proud parent, I was thrilled to see him all grown up, excited to meet his new classmates, ready for a new adventure. As someone who doesn’t want his babies to grow up too fast, I couldn’t help but think of how fast time flies. I was an emotional wreck walking him to his classroom. It seemed like only yesterday when we were bringing him home from the hospital.

For some reason, quite unknown to me at this point, I always assumed that Tyler would both listen to, and behave for, his teachers. While it is true that I typically have to repeat myself roughly 74 times in order to get his attention, I figured that was because I was his dad. That and I just assumed he was deaf. I have been told that this is fairly normal for children his age. This little nugget of information, while insightful, was shockingly worthless during his first parent teacher conference. Apparently, we are having some listening challenges and are repeatedly “pulling pockets”. Since we have learned about the pulling pockets, our lives have not been the same.

Apparently, in Tyler’s classroom, a three pocket system exists for disciplinary purposes. If a child is not following directions, they are asked to pull their name from the classroom pocket display and move it into the tier 1 pocket. If things don’t improve, pocket 2 is invoked and the threat of telling mom and dad about the transgressions is leveraged. Finally, pocket 3 comes into play if behavior doesn’t improve and a trip to the principal’s office is in the cards. From what I understand, pocket 3 is kind of like Defcon 5 and is rarely reached. At the end of every day, each student gets either a smiley face or a brief explanation of why pockets were pulled on a weekly report card.

Andrea and I are both incredibly competitive people. We like to win, in a mostly healthy kind of way. Occasionally we go over the top, but for the most part we just want to do our best. And win. When we learned that Tyler was a regular participant in the pulled-pocket-process, our competitive juices and parental insecurities kicked into overdrive and we committed ourselves to a pulled-pocket-free life. Since that decision, our lives now completely revolve around pulled pockets.

At first, like rookie parents, we opted for the negative reinforcement approach. If Tyler pulled a pocket at school, he wasn’t able to play with his Nintendo DS at all that afternoon. We realized fairly quickly that this approach wasn’t working when the frequency of pulled pockets did not go down and when Kailey started walking around chanting, “pulled pocket, no DS”. She has always enjoyed her role as the family enforcer.

Now, we are on a positive reinforcement kick. If Tyler goes a day without pulling a pocket, he gets DS time. If he goes a full week with no pockets, the whole family gets to go for ice cream. We are all heavily invested in having a pocket free week since we all love ice cream. It used to be a weekly family treat, but we haven’t had ice cream in over 12 weeks and some of us are starting to lose it. I try not to put too much pressure on Tyler, but for the sake of our family, we NEED a pocket-free week.

I thought we were going to make it last week. Going in to Friday, he had not pulled a pocket all week and he was pumped up for ice cream. Alas the irrational urges of a 5 year old can not easily be tamed and in the 11th hour, a pocket was pulled. I got the call at work and I am sure that my colleagues thought someone in the family had died given my disappointment and tears.

As I tried to regain my composure, I couldn’t help but reflect on the importance of keeping things in perspective. My own insecurities had turned Tyler’s pulled pockets from just a good kid adjusting to structure in school, to a perceived commentary on my worth as a parent. It became all about me and my issues, and not about how Tyler feels about school and how he is learning and adjusting. I think I might try more of a subdued, hands-off approach for awhile. Hopefully it works, because we really could use some ice cream.

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