Friday morning when I dropped off Jason at day care, one of his teachers took me aside and said she wanted to talk to me. I got a sinking feeling, because I was pretty sure I knew what this was about. As I mentioned before, Jason has been whining and crying a lot lately, and although we've been working on it and he is showing some improvement, it's often two steps forward, one step back. This wouldn't be the first time a teacher had mentioned this behavior, but every time before it had been a more offhand comment, often delivered with a conspiratorial grin. This time, though, the teacher was making sure to catch me before I left the room so she could have a discussion with me--not a good sign.

Just as I feared, the teacher wanted to talk about Jason's crying. It actually wasn't so bad. Mostly she told me about some strategies they use to manage him when he's being difficult (my word, not hers), and asked me to try them out at home. She felt that he was responding well to these changes, and wanted to make sure that we kept them up so he didn't backslide over the weekend.

For the most part, we were actually already doing a lot of what she said, with just some minor tweaks to how we would need to phrase our corrections. And she was really quite pleasant about the whole thing, not complaining or making it sound like he was a huge pain--which is to her credit, since I know he can be a pain. Even so, Juliette and I both felt horrible about the whole thing. The last thing either of us want is for Jason to be that kid.

The weekend ended up being a mix of high and low points. Sunday was a lot of fun, what with the trip to the splash park in the morning and a very good nap in the afternoon. Saturday was a little rougher, with a couple of screaming breakdowns, though I think those may have been exacerbated by tiredness. We tried to be consistent with what his daycare teachers recommended, though it's hard to know for sure if it worked.

Talking it over with Juliette last night, she said that if there's one bright side to this, it's that we know that the day care staff is seeing the real Jason, which means that he's very comfortable being around them and the other children. I actually think the reverse is also true: it means that we are seeing the real Jason.

I keep coming back to the surprise that one of our good friends expressed after hearing us talk about our struggles with his behavior. "It's so weird to hear you say all this," he said, "because I just see him as this wonderful kid." We do too, as we hastened to explain. We love how curious and intelligent he is, how articulate he can be and how funny, and even how generous and empathetic. It's just that he can also be stubborn and willful and just plain difficult, and those aren't behaviors that he usually displays around other people.

Hearing our friend's surprise, both Juliette and I felt a little guilty, and I started to wonder whether the stress of parenting wasn't coloring our perception a little too negatively. So, in that respect, knowing that Jason's teachers see this side of him too is a bit of a comfort, a little validation that, as great as Jason is in many ways, yes, he can also be a pill sometimes. As I think more about it, I think I'm finding that having that confirmation is making it a little easier to focus on Jason's good qualities, and hopefully these behavior strategies will have an effect, because the more time I can spend with a happy Jason, the more time I can be a happy Daddy.