Hands Are For Holding

Yesterday Dao’s teacher reported that he hit everyone at school for no reason. When he hit a bigger kid, he got his ass beat. I hope he had a taste of reality.

At home he behaved well for the most part. I was changing Dan because he spat milk on me and Dao showed me the brand new Lightning McQueen and asked me to open it for him. I asked him, “Did mommy let you have it?” He replied, “Yes. But I want you to open it for me.” I wanted to see what he would do if he gets the reward first. So I told him that I’ll open for you if you do this and this for me including not hitting friends. He replied, “Yes. I listen to you. Hands are for holding, not for hitting.”

We hit the shower, brushed our teeth and went to bed before 9pm. We read books and jumped around until 10 something. He actually did what he promised to do. When he fell asleep with cars in his hands, I tried to response to my clients’ emails, but then found out that I Love Ngoc Lan was hacked. I spent a couple of hours fixing it and went to bed at one something. The next morning he woke up and excited to go to school. Wow, for the first time my son actually wanted to go to school. I remained him what we talked yesterday and he repeated the “hand for holding” phrase. He went on in Vietnamese, “We take the old car to school. The new car is for going out only.” Usually he just want to ride in the new minivan, but today we took the old car.

We arrived at school around 7:45am, which was still early, and found a parking space closed to the building. As we walked off the parking lot he told me, “I don’t want to hold hands.” I asked him, “Why? What are hands for?” He replied, “Hands are for holding cars.” He was holding two cars in his hands. As I opened his classroom’s door, I ran right to Jackson, his car buddy, and showed Jackson his brand new Lightning McQueen. It hit me that the reason he was anxious to go to school was to show off his new toy. Let’s hope he’ll have a good day today.