That Anger Gene Strikes again

So, a few weeks ago Caroline my middle child, my exuberant, beats to her own drum, definite sense of what she wants, stubborn, but wonderful, little girl came home from school really upset. I do the appropriate parent thing and cajole, beg and slyly ask questions to drag it out of her.

She starts to cry over some girl being a wench to her. (Now mind you this girl has tortured my kid since day one, so my first response was to go pull out all that girls hair, because you know, that would be the mature reaction to someone hurting my child's feelings.)

Then it comes out.

Caroline socked her one right in the face on the play ground. I am pretty sure that it was open handed, but I was still waiting for the phone to ring and the principal telling me that Caroline had been expelled and was going to be charged with assault and battery, these days you never know.

So, like a good mom, I start going through the reasons why it is never OK to put your hands on someone else. The whole "you could have hurt her" thing, and Caroline looks up at me with those big brown eyes, totally over flowing with tears. (she has mastered the fill your eyes up just enough that they look like they are going to drip over, but they don't quite...it kills me.) and she says..."I really tried mom, I just couldn't help it."

Super Mom comes out with the appropriate response: "You can always help it, it is very important for you to learn self control." (mind you the whole time I am thinking about just the other day slamming the door to the basement so hard that our can holder ripped off the door and the cans went tumbling down the stairs at Old Man Lowery...but this was not the time to be reminding her of that!)

"But I promise, I was just standing there listening to her yell at me, I could feel my body shaking and all of the sudden my angry hand just reached out and smacked her before I could stop it."

It was very hard not to laugh because haven't we all had "Angry Hands?" I was really trying not to smile, and remain the steadfast parent of reason. But secretly I was thinking of all the times my angry hands, feet, words have had their way too. (And to be honest, also secretly thinking of this girl who has been so awful to Caroline all year, and my angry hand started twitching too.)

No phone call, luckily I think that their principal is too self involved to actually know that there are students milling around the building. I am fairly convinced he is going to come to work one day and say,"damn, where did all these kids come from, have they Always been here?" and then, I am pretty sure, one of the teachers is likely to get an angry hand too.