My Daughter as Mary

My daughter's pre-school Christmas 'pageant' occurred this week. Something about a bunch of 3-5 year old kids putting on a performance just doesn't lend itself to the definition of 'pageant.'

Short Attention-Span Theatre is more like it.

They did a couple of songs about Christmas, then a short play about an old man making candy canes in which the teacher recited all the lines for all the kids save one --a little girl who had memorized hers with the help of her parents. I sat beside them as they both mouthed the words together, so it was fairly obvious how their daughter knew. Still, it was impressive and in a class of 25 boys and 3 girls, the boys were put to shame (if they knew what shame was...). My daughter played Mary and di a fairly good job of explaining who Mary was and, of course, why we celebrate Christmas. By the time her part came around, though, most of the kids had taken to running back and forth on stage as they were getting extremely bored.

I sometimes think I'm too hard on my kids and keen to discipline them when they need it. But events like this make me see that I'm doing just fine, thank you very much. I was one of 2 adults aside from the teacher and her assistant to get up on stage to corral children after the play was over. I grabbed my daughter (who had fallen into the natural mindset that it must be okay to run around since everyone else was doing it) and the father of one of the boys grabbed his son too. It was a little too late, though, as one brat knocked over a 10-foot tall Christmas tree. How can a 5 year old kid knock over a tree 5 times taller than he is? And how did it not hit anyone else? It was only after the teacher scolded him and insisted that he get of the stage immediately that one of his parents came over to see "what's up."

Sure enough, my daughter's been invited to a birthday party next week and naturally it's this little punk. He's the type that gives you that BAD FEELING that you're going to hear his name many times over the next few decades... Yes, my daughter's 4 and I'm already dreading her teenage years.