I Hate It When I Can’t Go To Tahoe!

I was passing through all our classrooms this morning greeting teachers, parents and children as I normally do. Aidan, a 3 year old, was working on a sticker/drawing he was creating. I knelt down and watched him working. “What are you making?” Silence. I waited a bit while Aidan drew dark purple lines on his paper. I tried again. “You have 3 motorcycles there.” Aidan said, “Hate!” “Hate?” I queried. “Hate,” he repeated. “Is that hate you are drawing?” “Yes!” “Did you have a hard morning?” “No. I just want to go to Tahoe.” “Oh, you hate not being able to go to Tahoe.” “Yes!” More dark purple lines go on the paper.

I scrunched up my face into an angry expression and made an angry noise. Aidan stopped drawing and looked at me. “Is that how you feel?” I asked. “Yes.” I did it again. I said, “I really want to go to Tahoe.” “No!” Aidan said. “Maybe I can go to Tahoe on my bike,” I suggested. Aidan smiled at me. “No you can’t!” he said. “Oh no!” I grimaced. “That makes me so angry! Maybe I could go on a motorcycle?” “No you can’t!” Aidan said again. We went through several rounds of this. I really acted angry. I banged my fist on the table and talked in a really angry voice. Pretty soon Aidan was laughing at me. He enjoyed the game. We played the game of me asking if I could get to Tahoe in different ways, him telling me I couldn’t and me being very angry about that. When Aidan’s interest waned, I gave him a brief hug, wished him a good day, and moved on.

I have no idea what motivated that conversation I had with Aidan. His teachers and his mom said he was perfectly cheery when he arrived at school. In any case talking about feelings, especially negative feelings, is often a good idea. Conversations and role plays around negative feelings can help a child when they are overwhelmed by their own negative feelings. That wasn’t the case with Aidan this morning, but we had fun playing with expressing negative feelings.